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Copying VHS tapes to DVD


Tony F Dordogne
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I've got the kit to transfer slides and negatives to CD/Photo format and I've also got the kit to transfer LPs and cassette tapes to CD, both of which work really well.

What I'm looking for now is something that will transfer VHS tapes to DVD.  Looked in the pearl.fr catalogue, looked online at Maplin in the Uk, PC World etc etc, can't see anything on them.

Does anybody know where I can get one?

 

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[quote user="kimg"]and apparantly enhance the vhs quality as it converts it to digital[/quote]'Apparently' would be the word [Www]

Simply converting from analogue to digital will not result in one iota of improvement in quality over the original and will more likely result in some derioration.

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I'm not saying that enhancement is not possible, quite the reverse in fact, just that it is a very unlikely that a simple (read affordable) VHS to DVD copy machine will contain the technology and processing power necessary to achieve that. It can also be a very time consuming process.

As a fundamental rule converting any media from one format to another will automatically result in some loss of quality.

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ErnieY is right. Transfer from analogue to digital can only take the existing material and reproduce it as it is.

One word of warning: it may be your intention to archive commercial VHS material as DVDs. Many commercial VHS tapes are encoded (I forget the name but it may be something like videocrypt) so that copying them is difficult. A VHS to DVD machine may even be set up to detect this and will just not proceed. A session of judicious Googling may identify traders selling gizmos which will overcome the encoding, but they will need to be used with a separate VHS player.

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I am loosing the plot but I thought all you need do, assuming you have a DVD recorder was play the VHS through a SCART lead to the DVD recorder with the recorder set to record from the SCART and ideally using a TV to monitor what is going on ?

Worked for me when we decided that the boxed set of the Forsythe Saga a couple of US documentry series were swallowin too much storage space.

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[quote user="Anton Redman"]I am loosing the plot but I thought all you need do, assuming you have a DVD recorder was play the VHS through a SCART lead to the DVD recorder, with the recorder set to record from the SCART and ideally using a TV to monitor what is going on ?

[/quote]

Same here, but with much clearer explanation than the one I had in mind!

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OK, back to square one.

A couple of years ago I bought a VHS to DVD copier - mine was a Sharp DV-RW360H, but there were several brands available. What I did not appreciate was that Macrovision copy protection exists. I have just looked in the owner's manual and, on page 3, found the following statement:

"Copy Protection:

This unit supports Macrovision copy protection. ... When attempting to record copy protected material on a VCR or other recording device, the copy protection will activate and the protected material will not be recorded correctly."

When I tried to copy a protected VHS tape onto a DVD the process stopped after about one second and a message appeared stating that the operation had terminated. I eventually bought a device for about  £25 which was connected using scarts between a second VHS machine and the auxilliary input of my Sharp machine. The resulting DVDs were similar in visual quality to the original VHS tapes. You can try following Anton Redman's method but the result will be almost unwatchable. The link posted by ErnieY leads to a comprehensive Wikipedia entry on Macrovision.

Before anyone accuses me of piracy, I did this because DVDs are less bulky and more convenient to use than VHS tapes. The tapes were thrown away.

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[quote user="ErnieY"]You pirate you !

In theory yes you are correct but obviously the tapes you copied were not protected otherwise it would not have been so simple.

The symptoms of Macrovision protection are a washy picture which fades in and out.

[/quote]

Assuming for a minute that Anton was the original purchaser of said videos, then he has paid all the relevant industry people their fees. Anton merely wants to preserve the life of the product he purchased and shrink the storage space.

It's a mega rich business with people being paid sums of money that small towns don't earn. The royalties once paid do not entitle you to purchase another copy at a discount i.e. minus the royalties so copy away I say.[6]

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It was of course a tongue in cheek comment [blink]

That said though in UK at least, I don't really know about France, even making a backup copy strictly for your own use is outwith the law.

I'm firmly on your side, when I've paid for a CD or DVD etc. then short of copying it for profit or file sharing on the Internet I'll damn well will do what I like with it, so copy away I say too [8-|]

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