Stumbled across some old home videos of the kids at Christmas last night and realized I'd been meaning too, but never did, convert all the old family VHS tapes over to digital.

Can anyone recommend a good capture card to get from a VCR (composite) or Sony 8mm Camcorder (also composite) to the PC (USB most likely)??

All the ones I see on Amazon have a lot of 1 and 2 star reviews to go with the 5 star reviews (seems like 50% are 5* and 25% are 1*).

The wife and I watched for like and hour last night and we were laughing so hard last night at our crazy house with 4 boys under 5!

I need to do the same. I have a pinnacle capture card in an old PC and USB dazzle dongle. The card works well but its in an old PCI bus PC. The dazzle works but have to have the right combination of USB and hard disk to avoid frame drops.
For the 8MM the best way to transfer is using one of the later 8mm camcorders that had FireWire. People sell the camcorder & a firewire interface for windows machines on ebay for around $100.

I listened to a podcast a few months ago in which one of the co-hosts went into pretty extensive detail about how he does it.

Here's a link to the Youtube version of the podcast. It also has links to equipment used.

I converted a few VHS tapes and Hi-8 camcorder cassettes in the past year. I used a Black Magic Design H264 realtime encoder and just hooked the VCR and camcorder up to it. Then used black magic's software to rip the tapes.

I tried the cheap Amazon adapters and didn't like the quality.

I have also used the Blackmagic H.264 recorder. I convert analog to HDMI and feed it into the recorder. It is a little pricey for occasional home use.

I would recommend these two units for transferring hi-8, VHS, etc. to digital.

For home use, Blackmagic Designs makes a unit called the "Intensity Shuttle". It is about $200 and accepts HDMI, S-Video and RCA (audio & video) analog connections on the box. There are two different models. A Thunderbolt model and a USB 3 model.

If you are only going to record from analog S-Video or RCA connections only, the "Elgato analog video capture device" work pretty good. It runs about $85. The only potential negatives are that it only records in H.264 and has less bell & whistles.

The Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle will give you more options to record at a higher quality (Apple ProRes). Great if you want (and have the proper software) to do some more advanced editing, color correction, etc. The HDMI input allows you to record from more sources kids like to record themselves playing video games.

If you just want to get the old stuff in a digital format so you can watch it, save it, upload it, get the Elgato.

Koko Chingo said:

---

I have also used the Blackmagic H.264 recorder. I convert analog to HDMI and feed it into the recorder. It is a little pricey for occasional home use.

I would recommend these two units for transferring hi-8, VHS, etc. to digital.

For home use, Blackmagic Designs makes a unit called the "Intensity Shuttle". It is about $200 and accepts HDMI, S-Video and RCA (audio & video) analog connections on the box. There are two different models. A Thunderbolt model and a USB 3 model.

If you are only going to record from analog S-Video or RCA connections only, the "Elgato analog video capture device" work pretty good. It runs about $85. The only potential negatives are that it only records in H.264 and has less bell & whistles.

The Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle will give you more options to record at a higher quality (Apple ProRes). Great if you want (and have the proper software) to do some more advanced editing, color correction, etc. The HDMI input allows you to record from more sources kids like to record themselves playing video games.

If you just want to get the old stuff in a digital format so you can watch it, save it, upload it, get the Elgato.

---

That's where I was leaning as that's all I'm trying to do. Nothing is 'hi def' or even close. It's all 4:3 480 video with mono-sound.

I found some old VHS Tapes I'd transferred my 8mm too, put them in the VCR and nearly had a heart attack when the VCR tried to eat the tape. Managed to get it out with just a small wrinkle in the physical tape! For some reason, probably b/c I was broke, once I transferred the 8mm to VHS, I re-used the 8mm and recorded over it. I know for sure I did this with two 8mm cassettes but so far have only found "Part 2" of the two tapes. Gonna be kinda sad if I've somehow lost Part 1 - which has pregnant wife and first born on it.

If you're in the Houston area I could let you borrow my BlackMagic Design encoder. There's a small learning curve with the software but it does good work.

agracer said:

---

the VCR and nearly had a heart attack when the VCR tried to eat the tape. Managed to get it out with just a small wrinkle in the physical tape!

---

You can always go old school and physically slice the tape in the case something real bad happens. You will lose those precious seconds but not the whole video.

Good luck and enjoy the memories. Getting everything to a digital format means you can embarrass your kids for many years.

We have the ElGato Video Capture unit and it works great and have been using it for about two years. No issues.

https://www.elgato.com/en/video-capture