Hiya, pretty much the title. I have a dozen tapes I want to backup before age takes its toll. My basic idea after watching some videos online is to buy a hardware based upscaler that can interface with my vcr then throw that signal to a video capture card and record on my computer. I’ll go with name brands to avoid problems but is that really the best method? I want to avoid sending them to a service since it will cost more than just buying the hardware in the first place and I got time to kill.
So I’ll preface this with - here’s an example of how it turned out for me. [https://youtu.be/tzjdP94rKH4?feature=shared](Chuck E Cheese in 1994?)
A big part of saving VHS tapes is that you can only save what the tape still has, so if the tape was poor quality already then you can only pull so much out of it. But if this kind of quality is reasonable for you, then this was done very easily.
I used an I-O Data GV-USB2 Video, they run about $50 USD. I recorded the video through OBS, which is a free program. Just plugged VCR into the I-O GV-USB2, hit recorded on OBS, and hit play on the vcr.
All of the upscaling is great but I think the cost-quality difference wasn’t worth it considering the low quality of many of our home movies anyway. You can do better than what I have, and if it’s worth the cost then absolutely go for it. But for 50 bucks I saved all of my family’s old home videos on a hard drive and burned them to dvds and that’s more than good enough for me.
I just want to second the GV-USB2, it’s a nifty little device. I’ve used it to back up multiple home videos from VHS. The only thing is (at least this was the case when I bought my GV-USB2) all the instructions to activate it are in Chinese, you have to find a tutorial online if you can’t read Chinese. But there’s plenty of resources for you to take advantage of. Once you have it set up it’s essentially plug and play.
Your link is backwards. The text goes in the square brackets and the URL in the parentheses.
[Chuck E Cheese in 1994?](https://youtu.be/tzjdP94rKH4)
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
[https://piped.video/tzjdP94rKH4]](https://piped.video/tzjdP94rKH4])
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
