Convert VHS tape to DVD or flash drive

I would like to convert home movies that are on a VHS tape to DVD, and then to a flash drive or USB stick

convert a vhs tape to digital
I have done lots of that.
To get your VHS video into iMovie, use the Grassvalley ADVC300 (much better than the roxio easy vhs to dvd). With the ADVC300 Audio and Video go in, FireWire comes out. It also comes with a nice Macintosh application that works flawlessly with iMovie 06 and iDVD 09/11 (I have used it a few times with iMovie 11).
The program that comes with the ADVC300 has some nice filters that can improve video and audio of the source material. The ADVC300 will take Audio and Video from any source (VCR, Tivo, Satellite Receiver) and convert it to FireWire (iMovie will treat it like a camera).
http://www.grassvalley.com/products/advc300
I would use iMovie 06 with iDVD 09/11, why?
iMovie 09/11 uses 'single field processing' meaning every other horizontal line of the video is thrown out, which reduces the sharpness of the footage. iMovie 06 uses ALL of the image to form the video.
If your primary workflow is editing DV clips and making DVDs, iMovie '06 is better suited. Your movie will arrive at iDVD in DV format, which is an ideal match for making a DVD: same resolution, same pixels aspect ratio, and original quality.
If you share your movie from iMovie 09/11, it gets re-rendered at 640x480 or less, and then iDVD upscales it back to 720x480. The end result is obviously not as good.
iMovie 06 and iDVD 11 is a "lossless" combination.

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Can I convert my VHS tapes into DVD using iMAC?

How can I convert my VHS tapes into DVD by using iMAC?

From VHS to DVD
http://www.macworld.com/article/1030972/fromvhstodvd.html   <<< click here.
How to Convert a VHS to a DVD for Mac OS X
http://www.ehow.com/how_6515774_convert-dvd-mac-os-x.html   <<< click here.
Roxio unveils VHS to DVD converter for Mac
http://www.macnn.com/articles/09/05/26/roxio.vhs.to.dvd/   <<< click here.
How to Convert VHS to DVD on Mac OS X
http://www.daniusoft.com/tutorial/burn-vhs-to-dvd-on-mac.html   << click here.

How best to save VHS tapes to DVDs using a Mac ?

I have over 30 VHS tapes, eight Hi-8 tapes, and a player for both formats. Would like to make DVDs of these movies. There are a few USB adapters (Elgato Video Capture for $100, KWorld DVD Maker 2x for $28) and Roxio makes Easy VHS to DVD 3 Plus for $60. Have looked through AV forums on other websites and the directions are not concise, and are aimed at the PC platform. Prefer to use a Mac.
What is the fastest, easiest, and best way to save these VHS tapes to DVDs using a Mac ?

Frank Caggiano wrote:
Are you sure neither player has a digital output? FireWire would be the most likely connector on that type of equipment.
Both VHS & Hi-8 are analog tape formats so it is extremely unlikely that VHS players or Hi-8 camcorders would have built-in analog to digital converters. That's why you need a product that includes a hardware A-D converter like the three mentioned by the OP.
Roxio's Easy VHS to DVD 3 product is for Windows -- there is no software compatible with OS X included. The Easy VHS to DVD for Mac product does include OS X compatible software but it gets poor reviews at Amazon, has apparently not been updated in some time, & the support page for the product has some "page not found" links suggesting Roxio isn't currently supporting the product very well.
The KWorld DVD Maker comes with a software driver for its A-D converter, which apparently uses a Empia 28xx family chipset. According to this that driver will not work with recent OS X versions, but for $30 one can purchase the VideoGlide driver to solve that problem. The KWorld product does not include OS X compatible editing software; for that you use iMovie (& presumably Toast or iDVD or something else) to burn the movies to DVDs. That makes the price about the same as the Roxio solution but complicates support because hardware & software are coming from different companies.
The Elgato Video Capture product should be compatible with most OS X versions (but I could not find anything specifically about at beyond the typical "10.5 & above" kind of comment which may or may not mean it supports 10.8 or 10.9) but it captures to H.264/MPEG formats only, so like the KWorld you still need something to convert that to MPEG 2 to burn the captures to a standard DVD.
So basically, there is no easy "one step" method to transfer VHS (or any of the other analog video formats) to DVD's. Depending on the version of OS X in use, it should be fairly easy to convert the analog source material to a digital format that can be used with iTunes, iMovie, etc., but editing it & particularly burning that to a DVD that will play in a regular DVD player will take more work.

Converting VHS tapes

I am trying to find a vendor that can convert my old VHS tapes to DVD and then allow me to play around (add music, etc) with them in iMovie. So far, no luck. The ones I've contacted can basically just give me a stream of my DVD footage without the ability to organize it in any way, much less add a soundtrack. Any thoughts?

Yes, don't look for somewhere local necessarily. Do a Google search and you'll find a lot of places. For your purposes, you may want to forgo the DVD idea though and find a place that trasfers directly to hard drive in a format that the Mac will read. If I was at home, I could give you the name of a place that I found, but I'm sure you'll find it. Unfortunately, transfers are very expensive. If you have a lot of footage, you may want to do it yourself by buying a Canopus.
http://www.amazon.com/Canopus-770-10150-105-ADVC110-A-Converter/dp/B000GJVE8M/re f=sr12?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1231184472&sr=1-2

How to convert VCR Tape to DVD on MACbook Pro?

Any insight into how to convert VCR tapes to DVD on Macbook Pro would be much appreciated!

The first question is: how to get video into your Mac?
My answer is: use a DV camcorder as a translator. Most Canons and Sonys do this. Here are some general steps:
1. connect the video and audio outputs of your VCR to the input jacks of the camcorder. (If the video is on an S-video jack instead of the conventional yellow phono jack, it will be a little bit better quality.)
2. Using your camcorder's menu, set it to "AV IN->DV OUT". This will vary according to the model of your DVCAM. One hint: all camcorders have a 3-position camera/off/play(vcr) switch. In this application, most of them use the PLAY position.
3. Connect the DV out of the camcorder to a firewire port on the Mac. This requires the cable that comes with the camera...it's a mini-firewire on one end, and a regular firewire 400 on the other. (If your Mac has only a FW 800 jack, you may need another adapter.)
4. Turn on the DVCAM. Usually, iMovie will automatically open and be ready to record...if not, start it.
5. Hit PLAY on the VHS machine. You should see the video in the iMovie window. When you see what you want to save, press iMovie's button to start recording. You're free to edit the movie in any way you want.
When you have enough for a DVD, save it and use iDVD to burn a disc.
Alternatively, if you want to save a step, you can skip the iMovie step and just open up iDVD and select the feature...I forget the exact name...but it's like "Quick Movie" that will just save it as one stream.

How can I save my iMovie Project to a DVD or Flash Drive which can be played on a PC and any DVD player

I have an iMac, purchased in January 2011. How can I save an iMovie project to a DVD or Flash Drive which can be played on a PC or any DVD player

I will give you a basic primer, not going to get to in depth, as far as parameters, size of project, or the storage size of your usb flash drive, etc.
1. you have your finished iMovie project. Under iMovie>Share menu. Choose export using quicktime.
2. make Movie self contained. This way your Mov, Mvi, etc files will be part of the movie and it can play without having to reference the events, because it is actually there.
3. so, now on your desktop ( or any where else set up quicktime to save your file) you will see a quicktime file.
Drag & Drop that file on to the icon of your USB Flash Drive, etc.
4. Details that I omitted because I admit I am not well versed. Most Likely that quicktime file is larger than your USB Flash Drive. You have to use one of quicktime compression work flows, also if you open the just created quicktime file. It will open quicktime player and under the File>Export you have to options. I have a Movie that was 42GB 1080P, I exported it as a 720P, so it would still be playable on a large screen and now the new file was less than 2.5GB.
5. Oh, no i just realized that the file should be playable on a PC, as long as the PC has quicktime for windows installled and you left that USB formated at MS DOS as it came originally, or a PC will not recognize it. Will it open up on your Blu-Ray Player that has a USB port, not sure. Since there is no menu. but, perhaps just pushing play will start movie.
Hope this is of some help.

Import from DVD or Flash Drive??

I have tried to import into my Library on iTunes from DVD and Flash Drive. They play in iTunes fine as long as I have the DVD or flash Drive inserted in my computer but if I take them out of my computer and click on a song, a window comes up saying file cannot be played because it cannot be found.
I would like these items to download into iTunes and onto my hard drive but it keeps trying to read from my DVD or flash drive I guess. How can I import these items from the DVD or flash drive onto my hard drive?
I have iTunes 7 and run Windows Vista.
Thanks for your time.

Check your iTunes preferences. Go to Edit>Preferences>Advanced>Importing and make sure the box "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library" is checked. That way when you add files from one of your external sources they'll be copied to the computer. If this box isn't checked iTunes simply added a reference to the song's current location which of course is no longer accessible when you remove the drive or disk.

How can I convert MiniDV tapes to DVD? I've use a Canon GL 2 and an iMac about 1 year old. I'm trying to use iMovie and I've installed the latest drivers.

How can I convert MiniDV tapes to DVD? I've use a Canon GL 2 and an iMac about 1 year old. I'm trying to use iMovie and I've installed the latest drivers.

MiniDV was a great format, one I still use often. I also still use iMovie HD6 to process it and, for all the iterations of iMovie that followed it, I still believe it was one of Apple's greatest movie software programmes, next to Final Cut Pro, using a timeline method of editing. That was also in the day which Apple put Superdrives into their computers, so that you could not only make your movie in iMovie, but you could render it to iDVD and then burn the DVD. Now you need to buy an external burner.
Since iMovie HD6 and iDVD 6 were "universal" software, it has continued to work through the many OS releases since it came out with Tiger, I believe it was. So, it may still work with Mavericks too and, if you could locate a copy of iLife 06, probably used, you might enjoy the difference that HD6 has over all iMovie releases since then.
Not saying you can't process your MiniDV with current iMovie versions, but I'm not the one to speak about that.

Convert VHS tape to a DVD format??

How do I save my family home movies (VHS) to a DVD?
In broad terms what hardware and software could make this possible?

Ron,
Welcome to the discussions!
The first step is to convert the analog video on the VHS to a digital format (DV) that iMovie can understand.
Some miniDV cameras allow you to do this using a pass through function. You hook up a VHS deck to the camera and hook the camera up to your computer. The camera then takes the analog signal and converts it and passes it along to your computer and iMovie.
Alternatively, you can purchase a digital to analog converter. This would make it a bit easier if you have a lot of tapes to convert.
Some examples:
http://www.canopus.us/US/products/ADVC110/pm_advc110.asp
http://www.miglia.com/products/video/director2/index.html
Matt

Converting VHS tapes to Digital format to burn on DVD

Hi folks...
I did a search on this but was unable to find anything. So maybe some of you can help me out.
I have a number of VHS tapes that I want to get onto DVD. I do not want to spend hundreds of dollars though. Are there any in-expensive way of doing so??
Thanks

I did a search on this but was unable to find anything.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=1015944
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=1284669
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=1557705
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=1161010
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=1809629

Import VHS Tapes to DVD and iMovie

I have many old VHS tapes I want to finally digitize so I don't lose them. Most are old football games, generally between 1-2 hours per tape. I am working off of a new iMac - 27inch 3.1gHz 1TB hard drive.
I want to do 2 things:
1 - Backup each tape to a high quality DVD for backup purposes - to be played in a DVD player
2 - Store lower quality versions on my iMac hard drive to be viewed/ edited/ possibly uploaded to YouTube or other web based video sites
I have iMovie, and would like the ability to edit if possible - nothing major, ading scores, dates, etc...and possibly manipulating video (cropping of scenes, etc...) but not much.
I have researched and found a few different options. Most threads I have read seem to indicate the need for one of the following:
Canopus ADVC300
Canopus ADVC55
Elgato Eye TV Hybrid
I am willing to spend $100 - $200, but this I'd rather not go crazy. At a certain point it would just be easier to sed them away to be professionally archived to DVD.
Any advice?

I have many old VHS tapes I want to finally digitize so I don't lose them.
I have done lots of that.
To get your VHS video into iMovie, use the Grassvalley ADVC300. With the ADVC300 Audio and Video go in, FireWire comes out. It also comes with a nice Macintosh application that works flawlessly with iMovie 06 and iDVD 09/11 (I have used it a few times with iMovie 11).
The program that comes with the ADVC300 has some nice filters that can improve video and audio of the source material. The ADVC300 will take Audio and Video from any source (VCR, Tivo, Satellite Receiver) and convert it to FireWire (iMovie will treat it like a camera).
http://www.grassvalley.com/products/advc300
I would use iMovie 06 with iDVD 09/11, why?
iMovie 09/11 uses 'single field processing' meaning every other horizontal line of the video is thrown out, which reduces the sharpness of the footage. iMovie 06 uses ALL of the image to form the video.
If your primary workflow is editing DV clips and making DVDs, iMovie '06 is better suited.
Your movie will arrive at iDVD in DV format, which is an ideal match for making a DVD: same resolution, same pixels aspect ratio, and original quality. If you share your movie from iMovie 09/11, it gets re-rendered at 640x480 or less, and then iDVD upscales it back to 720x480. The end result is obviously not as good.
iMovie 06 and iDVD 11 is a "lossless" combination.

Converting VHS Tapes to Apple TV

Hi,
I'm trying to preserve a lot of footage of ballet stage performances from VHS tapes - about 120 hours worth. I've read through all of the forums about converting to DVD, so I've got that. What I'd really like to do is preserve them on an external hard drive and view them on the TV by streaming through Apple TV -- but only if I can preserve the quality.
I've imported one 50 minute tape through a Canopus ADVC-110 into DV format in iMovie. I've tried exporting to Quicktime or mp4 using numerous default compression settings with unacceptable results in quality (compared to the quality of the DV in iMovie). Now I'm trying to export to Quicktime using H.264 with a max bitrate of 4800 bps (Apple TV max is 5000 bps). I think this is as good as I can get, but the estimated time to completion is at 12 hours and keeps growing (I've got plenty of harddisk space and all other applications are closed).
So I'm guessing that in order to accomplish my goal, I need:
13 GB/hour storage = about 1.5 TB (ouch, but I can deal)
120 hours for analog to digital conversion (acceptable)
12 hours or who knows how much longer x 120 hours to compress? (unacceptable)
Am I missing something here? Is there a better way to preserve video quality as an .mp4, .m4v, or .mov file? Or should I just give up and burn everything to DVD?
Any suggestions appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Welcome to the forums.
A few thoughts about your desired objectives:
a) Will you want to edit the footage in future? (Keep the original tapes and/or use a digital format with very little compression - like .dv, and/or export the converted video to miniDV tape since it is full quality but smaller physical size)
b) Will you want to share footage with others? (DVDs are hard to beat)
c) Do you want maximum flexibility? (see (a)
If you're happy with the .dv option for flexibility and/or editing, then the challenge you look like you're facing is how to view your video. Obviously, Apple TV is one option, DVD is another. For video conversion, I've had good experience (speed and quality) with Visual Hub, Roxio Toast, and the free MPEG Streamclip. Processor speed is important for video conversion, so you probably want to use your fastest computer.
You might check whether DivX format is supported via Apple TV. It's a high quality but very compressed format - good for viewing/not good for editing in future.
To establish a workflow, I'd create a short test video of representative footage and then monitor how much time it takes to convert into the various video format options.
John

Transferring VHS tape to DVD

What is required to transfer VHS tapes from a VCR to DVD? Special cable to go from VCR to my Mac?
Thanks for any advice.
Brian

The easiest way to do it is to bypass the computer altogether and get yourself a DVD recorder. Then you just hook up the two units and do a machine to machine dubb
If you don't want to go that route (mind you, DVD recorders are getting pretty cheap) you will have to find a way to bring your analog (VHS) sources into the digital world
One way: A DV converter like the Canopus. Will allow you to do a Capture Now from your VCR thru the Canopus into the puter. You could also use a DV cam as a pass thru device; analog from the VCR to the cam, Firewire from the cam to the puter.
Once you have the tapes in the puter you have to get them into MPEG2 (DVD) format. You can do that by Exporting as Quicktime Movie and dropping the resulting file into iDVD and making a DVD there
This is more steps and more time than using a DVD Recorder but it gives you mo options; like cleaning up the analog signal a little (the newest Canopus converters have TBCs) and using FC/iDVD to create chapters, menus, etc

Hello converting vhs tape to go into imovie - gooood audio important!

Hello
I need to convert a vhs tape to play in imovie for a client,
it's for voiceover work website - so crisp clear audio is crucial.
not sure what to tell customer service person at vhs conversion store.
Help please!!
thnx

Hi
Concider the cost and the cost of an A/D-box to do the conversion by Your self.
I use an rather expencive one but get Audio and Video as good as is possibly (I think)
I use an Canopus ADVC-300 (Now Grass Valley ADVC-300) - This has some vital features
• Timecode correction = less baby sitting even if drop-outs on VHS-tape
• Picture enhanzing
• Audio stays in sync. even if tape is in LP-mode eg 8 hour and got drop outs
Yours very happy to do this at own speed and full control.
If I'd use a store to do it I would like to have material back on miniDV tapes
and as streamingDV (as recorded by miniDV Camera).
If result is to be a new DVD then I also would not use iMovie'08 to 11 but
• iMovie up to HD6 - or -
• FinalCut (any version)
This to keep picture quality as close to 100% as possibly.
Yours Bengt W

Converting VHS videos to DVDs

How do I use my Mac to convert old VHS video tapes to DVDs? Do I need to buy a converter of some kind? What is the process? I'd appreciate any light shone on this topic since I'm trying to preserve some family and travel videos by converting them and hopefully editing them in the process!
Thanks!

Hi
Yes You need something that converts from analog to digiatl.
• A/D-box like Canopus ADVC-55, 110 or 300
• miniDV Camera with video trough function
• miniDV Camera without - You need to copy one hour at a time to tape
(Don't use LP-function 90-min on a 60min tape - audio Will go out of Sync)
Many miniDV Cameras Don't have analog-in - in EU omitted due to tax regulations
extra cost to turn it on.
I do
• Have a Canopus ADVC-300
This because old VHS tapes often get's drop outs and the ADVC-300 makes it's own timecode
this makes it possibly to import in long sequences without the need of baby-sit.
You also need a SCART-plug WITH AN IN AND OUT Switch plus a RCA-Cable with three
connectors in each end. This to connect A/D-box with VHS-VCR and a 4-pin to 6-pin
FW-Cable for Canopus ADVC-300 to Mac (Others may use 6-pin to 6-pin or even
FW-800 to 6-pin)
There is no way possibly I know about if You got a Mac without a FW-port 800 or 400.
eg New Mac-Books. Sorry.
Yours Bengt W

Convert VHS tape to DVD or flash drive

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