Evening all,
Just a tantalising thought.. I have around a thousand VHS video tapes, and around fifty Philips VCR tapes, some of which which I may at some point wish to copy to DVD - especially the old adverts!.
Connecting up my DVD recorder to a VCR is the easy part.. What I am wondering about is the viability of the transferred video.. As we know, VCRs are inherently 'vague' in the sync department, as evidenced by the various modifications needed to older TVs in order to change line sync time constants, thus allowing the TV's line scan to accurately follow the varying syncs from the VCR.
The question is this; Does a stand alone DVD recorder have the capability of following the syncs from a VCR? Moreover, an HDD/DVD recorder where everything runs to (almost) absolute precision?
There are combination VHS/DVD recorders that claim to allow you to copy VHS to DVD, but are they specially built for the purpose?
Naturally, I am looking for the flexibility of recording to HDD first in order to allow editing and tidying up of the recorded material before transferring to DVD.
This then begs the question; Is the resultant DVD just a copy of the VCR recording, complete with timing errors? Or are the timing errors 'ironed out' during the transfer, and therefore equally suited for replay via non-modified TVs?
Just showing my ignorance in this area..... 
Marion
Hi Marion,
Now it's my turn to show my ignorance in this area as I'm certainly no expert at all.
Remember the railway DVD's I let you have, well they were originally VHS. I used a decent 6 head VHS machine to play them on and recorded on a Toshiba DVD recorder, the results were excellent but I did try to use a more basic video recorder (experimentally) and that gave very poor results in both picture and sound.
Marc.
Marc
BVWS member
RSGB call sign 2E0VTN
I have done it two ways
first using a video capture device plugged in to the pc and used nero to create the dvd the advantage was being able to add titles and other effects the disadvantage was the time it takes to convert the avi file.
second just plugged a vhs player into my pioneer dvd recorder .
results were good
disadvantage difficult to edit .
Rob T
Hi Jeffrey,
Those are some of the things I'm looking for 
.. Now, I do have an elderly LiteOn HDD/DVD recorder which will allow you to swap the HDD once full, however I have no idea what the maximum allowable capacity would be, it's currently kitted as factory, with 80Gb - not a lot of storage there!.. The (technically) better, and preferred, machine is a Sony, which as far as I can ascertain, will not allow HDD swapping because the machine's OS is stored there, and if replaced with a blank HDD, cannot boot up. 
I any event, the tapes will be kept, though I am aware that these can also degrade with time.. Certainly, I am only too aware that recordable DVDs are not forever.. I've experimented with disc failures and can render a recordable DVD useless all too easily.
Perhaps a newer HDD recorder is in order? But which one?...... 
Marion
Hi Marc,
The railway transfers are indeed excellent, but I've only ever replayed them via a VCR capable TV.. My curiosity is roused by the notion of replaying via an older (like my 1970's Decca, or Bush colour TVs) which aren't.
I'm assuming the the framestore in Jeffrey's example would essentially 'martial' the lines into neat frames, and thus eliminate the timing errors.
I guess a lot will also depend upon how accurately the VCR can deliver the syncs? Then that begs the question; How far can a framestore be pushed before it starts to complain?
Marion
15 years ago I got a dvd recorder and did just this. I connected the vhs recorder to it scart to scart and there were no problems. The quality is exactly the same as the vhs.I decided to use the lp setting on it instead of the sp setting as this gave me 3hrs instead of 2hrs. without any picture degradation that I could see. None of the discs have gone faulty in the 15 years. The recorder was a Philips and all of the blank dvd+r's were either Philips or Tdk.
I usually found it better to record to the HDD first on machines like your LiteOn, then transfer to DVD. Recording to HDD also gives you the possibility of performing some rudimentary editing prior to dumping across.
If you can find a Panasonic DMR-EX85, these have 250Gb hard drives and whilst the operating system is indeed stored on the HDD, there are people out there selling firmware discs that allow you to set the machines up with new drives. You can only use 250Gb drives though; that's what the system recognises. The drives are easy enough to pick up on eBay; my dead EX75 got an upgrade in the shape of a WD AV-rated drive for about a tenner!
I do wonder about the long-term viability of recordable DVDs; I have VHS recordings that are still perfectly okay after 25 years. I only use top-quality blank DVDs - usually Taiyo Yuiden, which IIRC are sometimes sold as JVC Professional. Like the difference between garage forecourt blank tapes and TDK EHGs in the old days!
The "set top box recorder" is a good and simple way to get the Video straight onto a DVD, I'm not sure about any sync issues from VHS using that method I must admit I never tried it.
I never had any decent results from PC capture cards, so my preferred method is to use our Mini DV camcorder as the interface.. using the AV input, it outputs DV Data stream straight into the PC either by Firewire or USB and Sync is excellent even on poor recordings.
The DV Video files do take up a lot of Disk space but at least they can be interfered with (edited) before the final burn onto a DVD, or VCD.
Oddly enough I started the long delayed catch up of many Holiday and other event recordings over Christmas, but if I wanted to copy all our VHS and Beta tapes, there is simply not enough time left.. those dam tapes do take up a lot of room though..
Oh hey!
Do you a TV advert DVD swap sometime? I have some 50s- 60s- 70s..
Don't buy a Philips DVD recorder - they skip little bits of video transfers because they have no timebase corrector adequate for domestic video formats. Since then, I have stuck with Panasonic, which have turned out fine on each one.
10 years ago I invested in a Lite On DVD recorder. It was superb for transferring VHS to DVD, what's more it handled everything, even a blank tape. Any tape damage came through clearer and perfectly locked, better than the original VHS infact with the sync break ups and the likes.
Unfortunately it failed towards the end of the guarantee period, probably through constant use. I exchanged it for another Lite On model, a newer one as the type I had was no longer in production. This was a disappointment from the outset as it has the annoying habit of going into pause during any tape damage/drop-outs etc, resulting in annoying jumps in the DVD recording. Doesn't appear to be a way to over-ride this horrible feature. Fortunately I'd already transferred the majority of important tapes using the older excellent machine.
Brian
The essential ingredient in the transfer path is a Time Base Corrector. This uses the VCR's sync to time data into a temporary store and a crystal controlled sync pulse generator for the correct read timing for the output video. You can think of the TBC as being a piece of electronic elastic between the two.
The frame store that Jeffrey mentioned should be able to do this on a grand scale!
Marion, I've never tried anything like this but to get round the HDD size limitation you mentioned, could you not transfer the VHS content to a re-recordable DVD, then put the DVD into your PC and create an ISO image on an HDD that can be as big as you want!
Download one of the free virtual CD/DVD drives to your PC into which you can mount any ISO image at will.
This will restrict your viewing to your PC, unless anybody knows how to get 625-line PAL out of the PC (but you could always transfer the images back to DVDs to cover any special requirement).
When all else fails, read the instructions
The essential ingredient in the transfer path is a Time Base Corrector. This uses the VCR's sync to time data into a temporary store and a crystal controlled sync pulse generator for the correct read timing for the output video. You can think of the TBC as being a piece of electronic elastic between the two.
Wot Terry sez.
Some of the more upmarket S-VHS machines (and many semi-professional/industrial machines) had this feature, although I have seen machines where the TBC function made matters worse when switched on!
I never had any decent results from PC capture cards, so my preferred method is to use our Mini DV camcorder as the interface.. using the AV input, it outputs DV Data stream straight into the PC either by Firewire or USB and Sync is excellent even on poor recordings.
The DV Video files do take up a lot of Disk space but at least they can be interfered with (edited) before the final burn onto a DVD, or VCD.
And of course, once they've been captured, they can be converted/optimised with FFMPEG for storage on a hard drive. Playback from the HDD could be via a WD TV Live box.
