Transferring Analogue Video to Computer

Relates to VHS, S-VHS and Hi8 formats

At first glance you might think 'Why would anyone want to do that?' The answer is that there are a lot of memories saved on analogue tape which are not going to be accessible once the machine they are on dies unless a new VCR is purchased. That's looking like a less and less sensible option, and doesn't get rid of the less interesting bits where the subjects aren't performing, the cameraman isn't concentrating, etc.

So assuming you want to transfer from analogue tape, how do you go about it. If your computer already has an analogue video-in port then it's pretty simple in theory. Examples of this sort of card are the ATI All-in-Wonder series of cards which have been installed in top-end multi-media computers. As the name suggests they have a great number of functions including analogue video capture and a TV tuner. If you have one, then you probably have software to capture video in real time bundled with it. If you don't have such a card already in your computer, then you will need to purchase and install a suitable dedicated card such as those in the Amazon.co.uk advert on the left.

Once you have a suitable card installed you will need to connect it to your input device using either a composite or S-Video cable. For a brief description of the differences see here. Don't forget to connect the sound to your soundcard line input if you want the ambient noise. How well this synchronises depends on your hardware.

Although you can get reasonable results, they will not be up to what is possible with a digital camera/vcr device, and each time you copy the video the quality will get appreciably worse. In fact unless you have a very fast computer, you may well find that you experience 'dropped frames'. This is when the computer and software cannot keep up with the video information being sent to it and misses some information out to try and keep up. What this means in practise is that you can get jerky motion on the captured video. It is probably also best to try to capture small amounts of video at a time as the files get absolutely enormous and very unweildy.

Once you have captured the video you want, use a video production program to assemble an interesting and beautiful work of video art. Or out-takes from your family gatherings, which ever you prefer.