Hot take- VHS has terrible quality, I just watched some old animated tapes from my childhood and they look bad. Thank goodness for DVD remasters.
I have 2000 old VHS tapes in my garage and don't know what to do with them
261–270 of 324 posts
Re: I have 2000 old VHS tapes in my garage and don't know what to do with them
#262It can become a compulsion to record and collect media. Seems like a male thing, normally it's blokes who create these archives. I met a bloke once in the 90's who made recordings on to C-90 tapes of anything interesting that was on BBC Radio 4 and 3, and he found most things interesting. He was surrounded by piles, thousands of tapes everywhere and he was desperately trying to catalog everything. As I spoke to him h…
My godfather has about 50,000 VHS tapes of TV recordings - all catalogued and neatly stored in huge pull-out racks that ⅔ of his three bedroom apartment (he’s single) are dedicated to. He wrote a cataloguing system in qbasic, having never coded before - these days he’s got a web app. I will one day be inheriting this lot, and have no damned idea what I’m going to do with them.
I recommend contacting the local retro computer or cinephile (or generic "geek') scene and see if you can recruit volunteers to digitize them for you. I would volunteer for this, take a crate home and pop in tapes while I go about my normal day.
Re: I have 2000 old VHS tapes in my garage and don't know what to do with them
#263Re: I have 2000 old VHS tapes in my garage and don't know what to do with them
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
vhs decode is not for the faint of heart. To use it you have to open up the vcr and soldier some tap points onto it and the software is all command line. I wasn't able to get it to work. I mean to try it again but I haven't gotten back to it yet.
Wouldn’t it be far easier to record downstream of the output? There must be cheap analog video recorders.
Yes. VHS-decode is an attempt to get the signal direct from the tape for high quality transfer. It is basically just using the heads on the vcr to pick up the raw signal and the software then decodes it.
There are some high end vcrs that can do a better job (according to those who have them.) but they are getting old and even broken ones can go for a couple hundred on ebay.
For home movies it isn't worth it since the starting quality probably isn't that great. I've messed around with it for a couple movies that were only released on VHS.
Re: I have 2000 old VHS tapes in my garage and don't know what to do with them
#265Send them to the Victorville Film Archive care of film buff Gregg Turkington.
Re: I have 2000 old VHS tapes in my garage and don't know what to do with them
#266It can become a compulsion to record and collect media. Seems like a male thing, normally it's blokes who create these archives. I met a bloke once in the 90's who made recordings on to C-90 tapes of anything interesting that was on BBC Radio 4 and 3, and he found most things interesting. He was surrounded by piles, thousands of tapes everywhere and he was desperately trying to catalog everything. As I spoke to him h…
Not just a male thing! [1] It might be the case that men are more likely to be collectors/hoarders in general but there definitely are women who partake. I will also say that the type of thing being collected matters. Go to an estate sale for a woman (especially one born before 1960) and you may see collections of dolls, tea services, certain types of paintings, etc. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Stokes
I think GP was referring to 'hoarding media' specifically, not just hoarding in general.
Re: I have 2000 old VHS tapes in my garage and don't know what to do with them
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
A Super 8 cartridge is only good for 2.5 minutes at 24 fps and 3:20 at 18 though, going to 120 (or even 20-30) minutes was quite a trade up. > Then VHS came out with the shoulder mount bricks. It took forever for VHS-C palmcorders to make them much more portable. The first VHS camcorder (a combined camera and recorder unit) was VHS-C. The JVC GR-C1, released 1984, made famous in Back to the Future. Full size (VHS) sh…
> The first VHS camcorder (a combined camera and recorder unit) was VHS-C VHS was released in 1976. VHS-C was released in 1982. The first VHS camcorder was not VHS-C.
> VHS was released in 1976. VHS-C was released in 1982.
So? The first commercial camcorder came out in 1983 (Betamax). VHS-C predates the camcorder of any format (the first VHS-C VCR JVC HR-C3 coming out the same time).
> The first VHS camcorder was not VHS-C.
I told you a specific make and model. Do you actually have a reference to any make and model of VHS camcorder commercially available prior to 1984? The NiCd 10kg “portable” JVC HR-4100 shoulder strap VTR came out in 1978, tis not a camcorder.
To be clear I’m (consistently) using “camcorder” with the commonly accepted definition of a camera and video recorder in a self-contained unit. With that definition the earliest commercially available VHS format camcorder was the JVC VHS-C mentioned, with Matsushita coming out with the full size M1 a few months later.
Prior to the GR-C1 there was a neat accessory to shoulder carry the aforementioned VHS-C portable, but not a camcorder (regardless the first VHS on your shoulder was VHS-C). This was sort of a poor man's Betacam setup.
https://www.totalrewind.org/cameras/C_SFP3.htm
Prior to that your options for portable VHS were the heavy carrying strap separate VTR like the JVC HR-2200 and the HR-4100 (sometimes referred to as “Portapaks” which was a genericization of Sonys open reel systems from the 60s). They were heavy and inferior to the contemporary Betamax and U-Matic S options, pros didn’t really use them and few enthusiasts were up for lugging 20 kilos of shit around. Hitachi made a few units as well.
Prior to 1985 there were just a handful of VHS licensees. JVC/Victor, Matsushita, Hitachi and Sharp with the other names like RCA as rebadges. No camcorders I’m aware of. I think you’re mistaken, but would be very interested in being corrected with specifics (as would the Rewind Museum).
https://www.rewindmuseum.com/vintagecamcorder.htm
The thing about hardware/electronic technology history in general is that the difference between 1976 and 1983 is not subtle. While VHS came out in 1976, and video tape in the 1960s, the technology to mass produce the level of integration for a camcorder did not exist (or at least was not cost effective) (not to mention the power efficiency leaps necessary as we were stuck with NiCds). Anyone that regularly dismantles any kind of electronic equipment from the 1970s to 1980s is aware of the extreme shift in integration that occurred during that time period, LSI ASICs, surface mount, things that were nearly unheard of in a commercial device in 1976, took hold in the 80s. It took a great deal of further engineering to make a camcorder possible, the tape format being around wasn't the issue. VHS-C like Betacam was developed in anticipation of this, not the other way around.
Re: I have 2000 old VHS tapes in my garage and don't know what to do with them
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
Should probably mention that it's your own software and that it cost $5. Not that the money really matters.
Also should mention that it's MIT licensed , not MIT software . But a cool program nonetheless!
Thank you for pointing out the potential ambiguity in saying "MIT open source". I can't edit my comment at this point in time - I'll be more clear next time.
Re: I have 2000 old VHS tapes in my garage and don't know what to do with them
#269Build a VHS tape pyramid and charge people $3 to see it. duh.
And then pave paradise, put up a parking lot.
Re: I have 2000 old VHS tapes in my garage and don't know what to do with them
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
Should probably mention that it's your own software and that it cost $5. Not that the money really matters.
It looks like the binary is $5 but it’s an open source electron app, so pretty easy to just clone the repo and build it yourself
:) I tried to make it as easy as possible to build your own copy. At the moment it should be as simple as `npm install` and `npm run electron` (two commands with no other setup to create the installer -- all in under 5 minutes)