transferring VHS to Mac

[Forge.]

any of you people done this?

I bought a thing a couple of years ago from 'Office works' for $99 and it was a total heap of shit so I took it back

any one know of anything that could actually work?

I actually don't have a VHS player either, But I figured I'd just get a cheap one and the video interface thing would accept RCA inputs

but if there is an actual machine all the better

?

[Tarekith]

There used to be machines that would convert VHS to DVD, that might be easy enough if you can still find one.

[Silverfish]

Ion (the OTHER Alesis/Numark/Akai brand) used to make a VHS player with a USB port. You could record to your computer with the software available on their website. I picked one up at a thrift store for five bucks. I've only used it once, and while the results were not professional archive quality, it certainly did the job.

And now I'm thinking that it's PC only.. hmm... lemme do some checking.

[rikhyray]

Get a gadget that you can still use later for something (like watching cricket on the move....) instead of wasting money on cheap interface for one time use. This one has s-video in, so you will only need a VHS player.
http://www.elgato.com/elgato/int/mainme ... t3.en.html

[Forge.]

thanks guys

It's just for home videos, some of them over 20 years old, so the quality doesn't have to be great, just to get them off tape before they disintegrate into dust!

that eye TV thing looks good

but the thing I bought was that kind of concept - a USB thing with composite inputs, but it was pretty much unusable.

[vicz]

I have the eye-tv thing and it works fine, just need to make sure the one you buy has the video cable/adapter included. The very old USB-based converters were poor, though there are some good firewire based one's around, maybe keep an eye on fleabay. I ditched mine because the Elgato works so well.

[rikhyray]

The very old USB-based converters were poor, though there are some good firewire based one's around, maybe keep an eye on fleabay. I ditched mine because the Elgato works so well.

Exactly, why suggested eyeTV. Used various USB TV cards over the years and their prices went down while quality dramatically up. So it is not worth to buy any old from Ebay (even if they were few hundred $ years back) the cheapos of today are already better but it is worth to spend 20-40 more on decent brand, there is noticeable performance difference.