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I have 2000 old VHS tapes in my garage and don't know what to do with them

takes.jamesomalley.co.uk

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Re: I have 2000 old VHS tapes in my garage and don't know what to do with them

#181

Post by suddenclarity »

etrautmann wrote: post #138
jccalhoun wrote: post #110

Earlier 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.

There are and you can get cheap noname Chinese ones for as low as $10.

Unfortunately most of them are terrible. I've played with it on and off for years and even gotten individual tools for $100+ but still have issues. It's a bit of a mess with PAL/NTSC, different recommended settings, and at the end of the day you still need a high quality VCR to extract all the data. Those tend to go for hundreds of dollars here. You also need a time base corrector (some VHS have them built in I believe) to avoid dropping frames and causing desync.

A common suggestion is to just get a VHS->DVD recorder and then rip the DVD. You lose out on quality but it usually works and will save you a ton of time.

The suggestion by OP is probably if you truly want to maximize the quality.

Re: I have 2000 old VHS tapes in my garage and don't know what to do with them

#182

Post by suddenclarity »

yboris wrote: post #99

Once you digitize them, you'll want to browse the videos. Consider using Video Hub App - an MIT open source application (Windows, Mac, Linux) that shows you screenshots (that you can scrub through) from each video. https://videohubapp.com/ https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App

Should probably mention that it's your own software and that it cost $5. Not that the money really matters.

Re: I have 2000 old VHS tapes in my garage and don't know what to do with them

#185

Post by calamity_elf »

madaxe_again wrote: post #177
fallinditch wrote: post #21

It 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.

That's a colossal number of tapes. The few I found that had been stored in boxes since the 80s had mould on them, hopefully the collection doesn't have mould.

Re: I have 2000 old VHS tapes in my garage and don't know what to do with them

#186

Post by lofaszvanitt »

Mistletoe wrote: post #95
lofaszvanitt wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those stored things are your digital roots. Without them, you are nobody.

I like the sentiment but I think most people I know would be better off freed from their hoarded items and actually able to be somebody. Your comment does remind me of the replicants from Blade Runner and how they need their “precious photos” that aren’t even real as a touchstone to link them to the implanted memories.

What makes you think people are burdened by their belongings? I'm not talking about heavy hoarders. Having things and photos are actually good for your soul. You go to a trip for one month, take photos, sometimes rewatching them helps them bring you back the good memories.

Try it, experience it. It's like walking on grass bare footed.

Re: I have 2000 old VHS tapes in my garage and don't know what to do with them

#187

Post by egorfine »

ToDougie wrote: post #38
adamrezich wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for this link! My mom went through hell trying several “professional” commercial services both locally and elsewhere, just trying to get our couple dozen or so family video VHS tapes converted into some digital format. They all suck ass —not that my mom cares, of course, she's perfectly content watching videos of her children hideously stretched from 4:3 to 16:9, among many other issues. But now at least I…

This was so charming. I wish my parents had more recorded content of us, but it was a rare day that someone would get out the camcorder, and even rarer that the files would get transposed anywhere. But I do think there are some really old hard drives (anywhere from 10G to 40G) sitting somewhere in a garage, full of JPEGs of us.

> really old hard drives (anywhere from 10G to 40G)

VHS was already totally obsolete when 1+GB HDD came to consumer market...

Re: I have 2000 old VHS tapes in my garage and don't know what to do with them

#188

Post by abdulhaq »

madaxe_again wrote: post #177
fallinditch wrote: post #21

It 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.

Sadly, it's simple, you pay someone to come and dispose of it.

Re: I have 2000 old VHS tapes in my garage and don't know what to do with them

#189

Post by randomdata »

dylan604 wrote: post #67
userbinator wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can do that from archive.org

Your assuming that the archival format would be the same or that there's not anything else specific for their needs. Everybody thinks their snowflake is special, and definitely more special than anyone else's snowflake.

You're assuming that people can't get along. Is there some reason the BBC and archive.org can't work together to satisfy both of their wants and needs?

Re: I have 2000 old VHS tapes in my garage and don't know what to do with them

#190

Post by Ylpertnodi »

ozozozd wrote: post #141

I am shocked that no one is talking about Teletext! I am guessing it wasn’t a thing in US or I am the oldest person to comment so far? I had forgotten that Teletext existed until this post. And for those who know about BBSs, Teletext was the closest thing before modems. I don’t remember seeing the wild Teletext Ascii art etc. as seen in the post though. UK seems to have had mad Teletext.

>Teletext. And damnation on the manufacturers of the red button that never worked.
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