DescentBB

VCR tape to digital file

I have a friend who has a 5 minute thing on a VCR tape that he would like to e-mail a friend rather than sending a duplicate tape.

Is there a way to convert w/o special equipment or cards?

Play the tape on a TV and record it with a digital camera that can take short movies.

does your video card have an AV-input? or do you have a TV-card?

if both not apply, you should check for nearby video service shops. sometimes they offer that service.

Best way to do it with a computer is to have a tv tuner card. For example my hauppauge card streams directly to mpeg2. In Linux you could just cat that baby to a file!

I have a Mini camcorder so I guess that would work using the TV.

Thanks I'll give it a try.

Keep in mind its going to look like garbage. Spend the bucks for a capture card if you want decent quality. And don't get the USB dongle crap. Get one that uses a PCI slot. (newegg) This one is an upgraded version of what I use (TV2000XP Deluxe). The only difference between mine, and this one, is that mine has a cable dongle that plugs into a proprietary port on the card. This one has all of the jacks built-in. That, and mine has the AM/FM tuner.

Heh.. speaking of crap... Most TV tuners don't do a good job of analog->digital conversion- audio synch and dropped frames are a big issue. Since you are just doing a short tape, it will probably work OK, but I do this a lot, and use a Canopus ADVC-50

http://www.videohelp.com/capturecards.p ... rdRead=150

- picture quality is so much better than other converters I've seen, and no software involved, no drivers, etc.. completely hardware. Speaking of hardware, it is audio/video locked, so you NEVER have audio sync issues. Unfortunately they are out of production (look on e-bay)- the replacement is a little more expensive http://www.academicsuperstore.com/marke ... ch=canopus

All is well. He's going to make another copy and mail it. Problem solved and I learned a few things along the way.

Thanks.