Transferring VHS to DVD

[Don Tolson]

I have a fairly extensive collection of Disney animation features on VHS tape (legally bought!) which I'd love to transfer to DVD for a) reduction of storage required; and b) longevity of the images.

I tried attaching the VCR to my Sony TRV-460 as an intermediary, but that isn't going to work.

Is there any other option? Or am I going to have to bite the bullet and re-buy all these when they (maybe) come out on DVD?

[Chris Gohlke]

We started discussing that here http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/index.php?action=expand,6427&sid=9e7d17176c1bd7fae86a13e61125d64b

and left off with Jason ordering a piece of hardware to try and get this to work.

[Jason Dunn]

I'm in the midst of doing some experiments with this myself - I'm trying to archive Star Wars IV, and the resulting video footage isn't all that great. I'm going to upload as a small sample to see what people think of it - I'm not sure if the jittery image I'm seeing is the Macrovision protection or not...watch the front page latery today or tomorrow.

[Bob12]

I have an HP MovieWriter 4000 external DVD burner which has its own video capture card. I copied Jonathan Livingston Seagull from VHS to DVD and the result is of the same quality as the origina VHS with no jitters. Sounds like the problem Jason had may be related to copy protection.

[Don Tolson]

We started discussing that here http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/index.php?action=expand,6427&sid=9e7d17176c1bd7fae86a13e61125d64b

and left off with Jason ordering a piece of hardware to try and get this to work.

I see where people are going. My problem is that I can attach the VCR to the Sony DRV460 and 'play' the movie through the camera's viewfinder just fine. When I attempt to hit the 'Record' button to copy to the camera's DV tape, the camera presents a message saying 'Cannot proceed due to Copy Protection'. Thus, I don't think this is due to any 'metal tab' inside the VHS tape. My guess is some kind of encoding on the signal.

I was hoping for some kind of solution that didn't involve me acquiring any additional hardware.

[Jason Dunn]

...a message saying 'Cannot proceed due to Copy Protection'. Thus, I don't think this is due to any 'metal tab' inside the VHS tape. My guess is some kind of encoding on the signal.

Right - that's Macrovision, and it's part of the signal. The only way to record a Macrovision-encoded VHS signal is to strip the signal out, which usually requires some additional hardware. I'm still looking into it on my end, so hang tight. :-)