VCR to PC conversion

[SS2006]

My PC Video card has a S-Video plug in it, as does my VCR
i wanted to convert a tape i have in the VCR to the PC
ive never really done this before i want tok now if it can be done and what programs i need
thanks

[moonrocks]

You can convert a VHS tape to digital video on your PC. Just to get a basic idea of what's involved you might want to read:

http://nickyguides.digital-digest.com/video-capture.htm

If your video card has an s-video input then it probably came with capture software, so check that out first. You may already have everything you need to capture video to your PC. If you can capture straight to mpeg2 that would be easiest. The bundled software with your video card might have a lot of other tools too.

If you don't have capture software with your video card you could try freeware like VirtualDubMod or VirtualVCR to capture. They'll capture the video to an .avi file. You'll also need to connect the audio out from your VCR to the sound card on your PC.

http://virtualdubmod.sourceforge.net/

http://virtualvcr.sourceforge.net/

Depending upon your final destination for the video, for example if going to DVD, you'd then want to re-encode the captured .avi file to mpeg2. Lots of video cards, like ATI All-In-Wonder cards, or dedicated capture cards like the Hauppauge cards, come with software to make the capture process pretty painless.

[SS2006]

thanks so much, was real helpful

i have a tricky quesiotn though, if the tape is in pal format, so its now showing well at all on a NTSC VCR, like the picture is messed up and the sound is also wierd, and i converted that to avi on the pc, and then converted it to NTSC (this conversion i have done before) would it actually fix the image. or the initial pal ntsc conversion should be done to the VHS tape.
thanks

[moonrocks]

I'm not sure I understand exactly what your asking, but let me take a stab at it - if you're asking can you play the PAL tape on an NTSC VCR and then convert the captured file to NTSC, the answer would be no.

If you have a PAL tape that you want to convert to NTSC you have to play it on a PAL VCR or a multi-format VCR, and then after capturing to an .avi file you could convert the .avi file to NTSC. There are some multi-format VCR's that will do the conversion for you, it will play the PAL tape and output an NTSC video.

[SS2006]

thanks man
your awesome