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Archive => Archived Boards => Miscellaneous => Topic started by: marveld on October 10, 2014, 06:53:05 PM

Title: Transferring VHS TAPES TO DVD
Post by: marveld on October 10, 2014, 06:53:05 PM
Has anyone used a local service or done this themselves successfully? Have your 3hr (ish) VHS tapes been transferred to a 3 hour single DVD without loss of quality?

The hardware I have at home lets me record a VHS tape to DVD, but setting the DVD machine to the highest quality recording (HD), this only gives me 1 hour of VHS footage before the single layer DVD 4.7Gb size it reached. Each VHS tape therefore will yield three one-hour DVDs, which is not ideal. I don't have a Blu Ray machine.

Any tips and advice appreciated.
Title: Re: Transferring VHS TAPES TO DVD
Post by: sgk on October 10, 2014, 07:36:41 PM
Has anyone used a local service or done this themselves successfully? Have your 3hr (ish) VHS tapes been transferred to a 3 hour single DVD without loss of quality?

The hardware I have at home lets me record a VHS tape to DVD, but setting the DVD machine to the highest quality recording (HD), this only gives me 1 hour of VHS footage before the single layer DVD 4.7Gb size it reached. Each VHS tape therefore will yield three one-hour DVDs, which is not ideal. I don't have a Blu Ray machine.

Any tips and advice appreciated.

I've had lots of success using Format Factory (http://download.cnet.com/FormatFactory/3000-2194_4-10968547.html) to get large video files from my camera down to a decent size.  Free, so might be worth you trying it.
Title: Re: Transferring VHS TAPES TO DVD
Post by: admin on October 11, 2014, 07:24:08 AM
Has anyone used a local service or done this themselves successfully? Have your 3hr (ish) VHS tapes been transferred to a 3 hour single DVD without loss of quality?

The hardware I have at home lets me record a VHS tape to DVD, but setting the DVD machine to the highest quality recording (HD), this only gives me 1 hour of VHS footage before the single layer DVD 4.7Gb size it reached. Each VHS tape therefore will yield three one-hour DVDs, which is not ideal. I don't have a Blu Ray machine.

Any tips and advice appreciated.

Is it necessary to set the quality to HD? The original VHS tapes aren't HD quality are they?
Title: Re: Transferring VHS TAPES TO DVD
Post by: marveld on October 11, 2014, 07:10:06 PM
Is it necessary to set the quality to HD? The original VHS tapes aren't HD quality are they?

I'm not 100% sure about this, but my logic is to ensure you keep the original quality of the VHS tape, you record to DVD using the highest setting. I appreciate the tapes aren't super high def, but I didn't want the end result to be any worse.

I guess I could do some transferring using SHD / SP / LP etc. to see if the HD setting was significant.




Title: Re: Transferring VHS TAPES TO DVD
Post by: Howard on October 12, 2014, 11:52:20 PM
I'd second the point on quality. VHS is such poor quality, event the lowest quality of DVD compression rate won't show any noticeable loss of quality.

Just try it with a few rewritable DVDs. Record 5 minutes of the same scene at high, medium and low quality and then do a blind test. I bet no-one will notice the difference.
Title: Re: Transferring VHS TAPES TO DVD
Post by: Duke Fame on October 13, 2014, 11:09:11 AM
Has anyone used a local service or done this themselves successfully? Have your 3hr (ish) VHS tapes been transferred to a 3 hour single DVD without loss of quality?

The hardware I have at home lets me record a VHS tape to DVD, but setting the DVD machine to the highest quality recording (HD), this only gives me 1 hour of VHS footage before the single layer DVD 4.7Gb size it reached. Each VHS tape therefore will yield three one-hour DVDs, which is not ideal. I don't have a Blu Ray machine.

Any tips and advice appreciated.

It can be done at home but try 'Discgotech' on Bridge Street Brow (just up from the fishmonger) - he's quite reasonable.
Title: Re: Transferring VHS TAPES TO DVD
Post by: marveld on October 14, 2014, 08:05:05 PM
I've had lots of success using Format Factory (http://download.cnet.com/FormatFactory/3000-2194_4-10968547.html) to get large video files from my camera down to a decent size.  Free, so might be worth you trying it.

Thanks, I've installed Format Factory. A useful software package for different file conversions.