Topic: VHS to Mac, any suggestions?

[tjj5036]

Currently rocking a Macbook M1 on Monterey and looking at capture devices that would allow me to rip VHS tapes straight to the Macbook. Any suggestions or recommendations? I currently use an AverMedia stick on an ancient Windows box but the software is god awful.

[guitard]

Currently rocking a Macbook M1 on Monterey and looking at capture devices that would allow me to rip VHS tapes straight to the Macbook. Any suggestions or recommendations? I currently use an AverMedia stick on an ancient Windows box but the software is god awful.

I don't know much about Macs, but regardless of whether it's a PC or Mac, you have to convert the analog signal to digital.  There are lots of devices out there that do this (Canopus makes a couple nice ones - ADVC110 works great).  Most require a firewire port, and those work great; as opposed to devices that do this via USB, which tend not to work well (or barely at all).  But very, very few laptops have firewire ports.  I have a laptop with a PCI-Express Firewire Card that works.  But that requires an express card slot; and luckily I found a laptop that came with an express card slot.

Depending on how many tapes you have, you might better off sending it to someone who can convert the tapes to digital and send you the raw footage and then you can work with it on your Mac.  For reference, an hour of digitized standard definition video is about 13 GBs.  There are guys who will do that for something likek $15/tape and send the raw video back to you via Dropbox or Google Drive.

[nulldogmas]

Once you find a connection to get the video into the Mac, QuickTime actually has a recording function that works really well and seamlessly.

What kind of inputs does your Macbook have? I've had good success with this, but it requires either a full-sized USB port or a hub with one:

https://ezcap.com/index.php/product/ezcap159videograbber.html

[RyanJ]

I'm not saying that I am the expert at this. But in the last two years, I have put a LOT of time in to making a proper VHS transfer method for Macs. If I had to do it over, I probably would have gone with a windows computer to make this happen. By talking with other archivists, windows has better compatibility with analog transfers. I also may not be using all the correct lingo, or know 100% to the exact detail why these methods are better than others. But I've tried to comprehend it to the best of my abilities. There was a lot of trial and error with different equipment in order to make it happen. Which was a lot of waiting for gear to come, that potentially didn't work. Then having to work the signal to see what would work.

If you are still looking to use a Mac. I highly recommend getting an older MacBook Pro (Mid-2012 as you can upgrade to 16GB RAM and find one with a 2.7 gHz processor that is still pretty fast) or Mac Mini (2012-14 where you can still upgrade the RAM and add more SSD storage). These both still have a Firewire port which will help with this older media. These machines can't be upgraded to the new OS. I think the max is Catalina. But it's important when having programs work with the video transfers. I have an M1 Mac Mini and the equipment below won't be recognized with all the dongles that I bought from apple to use on a USB-C. I saw people on YouTube able to use all the dongles to make a transfer, but I can say it didn't help with me. Your best bet for everything to work flawlessly is buy an older Mac.

If you're wanting to archive this footage, I would stay away from the ezcap. It isn't going to give you the quality you want and it comes compressed when you transfer the video. Here is my gear that I use.

VCR: JVC HR-S7600J VCR

- I'm able to transfer NTSC/PAL on this machine and it has professional video calibration on it. I have read on a lot of forums that it's a great VHS for transfers. They do get to be pricey on eBay.

TBC: DataVideo TBC-1000

- Time Base Correctors are the most expensive thing you will buy for video transfers. But WORTH IT. After reading on video forums, the TBC-1000 seems to be one of the best ones out there. Sadly, they are discontinued and stupid expensive. I think this one in particular was $500 when it was available and now they go for about 4x that price. They may not even be working the ones you pick up on eBay. It's absolutely insane. I was able to pick up one up from a NIN fan that was broken. With these machines, you should use them on a UPS battery backup as some of their power adapters will pump out more voltage than anticipated and will fry the board. That is what happened to mine. There is a guy locally that fixes these things and I was able to have him fix mine. He replaced all of the capacitors and wiring inside. My power supply was giving too much voltage and during VHS transfers would overheat and then the picture will go black. Since the overhaul, none of this is a problem and I bought a new power supply and hooked it up to my UPS. All is good.

- Without the TBC, the signal from the VHS to your computer will not be continuous. It will break up and your capture device will think there is either an A) error or B) the tape is finished and will stop the capture. I had no idea why this happened until I read more into this. But once I got the TBC, it mitigates all of these issues.


Capture Card: ADVC110 (Via FireWire) OR Blackmagic design intensity shuttle (usb3.0)

- Again, a very finicky piece of equipment for Macs. Either one of these will be recognized by the M1 Macs and it's because they aren't updated anymore by their manufacturers. This is why you need an older Mac to do analog transfers. On either one of these capture cards, you can use S-Video. Which will give you the best quality video you are able to achieve with VHS transfers.

Here are some of the references I used quite frequently in my endeavors. If you don't want to dive deep on this, you can alway send me the VHS tapes and I would happily transfer them for you. I don't have any projects currently and would love to help you.

https://forum.videohelp.com/forums/10-Capturing
http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/

If you're talking MiniDV, that is such a beast I don't wish anyone to work on that media. You need the EXACT model camcorder in order to play some of those tapes well. I almost quit doing video transfers because of it and went insane.

Hope this helps a bit.

[tjj5036]

Thank you for the fantastic reply RyanJ, this is insanely helpful. Looks like going the older PC route is the way to go, will report back with my findings.