Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works to datahoarder@lemmy.mlEnglish · 2 months ago

Do you have any advice for digitizing VHS tapes?

Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works to datahoarder@lemmy.mlEnglish · 2 months ago

I have a bunch of old VHS tapes that I want to digitize. I have never digitized VHS tapes before. I picked up a generic HDMI capture card, and a generic composite to HDMI converter. Using both of those, I was planning on hooking a VCR up to a computer running OBS. Overall, I’m rather ignorant of the process. The main questions that I currently have are as follows:

What are the best practices for reducing the risk of damaging the tapes?
Are there any good steps to take to maximize video quality?
Is a TBC required (can it be done in software after digitization)?
Should I clean the VCR after every tape?
Should I clean every tape before digitization?
Should I have a separate VCR for the specific purpose of cleaning tapes?

Please let me know if you have any extra advice or recommendations at all beyond what I have mentioned. Any information at all is a big help.

Chat

ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org
link
fedilink
English
arrow-up
2·
2 months ago

If I did want to capture the raw signal

Never done this; see recommended techniques by the vhs-decode community.

datahoarder@lemmy.ml

Create a post

You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !datahoarder@lemmy.ml

Who are we?

We are digital librarians. Among us are represented the various reasons to keep data – legal requirements, competitive requirements, uncertainty of permanence of cloud services, distaste for transmitting your data externally (e.g. government or corporate espionage), cultural and familial archivists, internet collapse preppers, and people who do it themselves so they’re sure it’s done right. Everyone has their reasons for curating the data they have decided to keep (either forever or For A Damn Long Time). Along the way we have sought out like-minded individuals to exchange strategies, war stories, and cautionary tales of failures.

We are one. We are legion. And we’re trying really hard not to forget.

– 5-4-3-2-1-bang from this thread

Visibility: Public

This community can be federated to other instances and be posted/commented in by their users.

2 users / day
21 users / week
400 users / month
1.64K users / 6 months
1 local subscriber
6.7K subscribers
132 Posts
704 Comments
Modlog

mods:
-Archivist@lemmy.ml