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HeXiLeD Veteran
Joined: 20 Aug 2005 Posts: 1159 Location: Online
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Posted: Sun Feb 17, 2013 10:18 pm Post subject: Playing video from VCR (hardware and software questions) |
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I have a few old VHS tapes that contain some videos that i would like to play and convert to a digital format but i nver done things before and i am not sure how to start.
As far as i know to simply play the video i can get a scart to dvi or vga cable/adaptor but this means to plug the VCR directly to the monitor just to watch the video and while this is fine to start i need to convert the videos.
I may need some hadware such as en encoder card but i am not sure. Can anyone confirm this?
As for my current video card i have an VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation G84 [GeForce 8600 GT] (rev a1) with 2 DVI outputs and one svideo and i am wondering if i can plug the VCR to the svideo and then use mplayer or vlc to watch the videos.
Has anyone done this ? What is the recommendation ? _________________ Do you hear the sound of inevitability?
With age, comes great grumpiness and that, was 20 years ago...
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jasn Guru
Joined: 05 May 2005 Posts: 439 Location: Maryland, US
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Posted: Sun Feb 17, 2013 11:19 pm Post subject: |
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Here's a good starting guide. In order to get the VCR output into your computer you just need a VHS to USB capture dongle, that's will plug into your system as a V4L2 device, like this Roxio branded EM28xx device. This superuser posted question and answer demonstrates that as is the case with the Roxio device, if you check with the V4L-DVB wiki guide here, there should be plenty of these VHS-USB dongle devices supported as a capture devices under Linux. Then it's just a matter of choosing software to grab and encode the signal to a file.
Good Luck.. |
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NeddySeagoon Administrator
Joined: 05 Jul 2003 Posts: 54096 Location: 56N 3W
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Posted: Sun Feb 17, 2013 11:47 pm Post subject: |
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HeXiLeD,
VHS video quality is fairly poor - well below the old analogue broadcast TV standrds.
Your VHS player will have several outputs,
RF - the is worst of all
Composite, this is the PAL encoded video signal before its passed to the modulator to generate the RF signal. Its slightly better.
S-Video. This is the Luma and Y-R and Y-B on separate wires. and is pretty much as good as it gets.
These are all analogue interfaces. You may find a suitable video capture card going for the price of a beer as nobody uses them any more.
Brooktree based cards are well supported by the kernel.
The SCART output provides component video, (RGB) but the signal on the tape is like S-Video, so thats a good as it gets.
I don't know of any analogue capture cards that accept RGB. _________________ Regards,
NeddySeagoon
Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail. |
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Tony0945 Watchman
Joined: 25 Jul 2006 Posts: 5127 Location: Illinois, USA
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Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2013 12:44 am Post subject: |
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Quote: | Composite, this is the PAL encoded video signal before its passed to the modulator to generate the RF signal. Code: |
Just to amplify your answer, in USA-marketed VCR's the video Signal is NTSC. US TV's that accept composite inputs will play. The quality depends on the recorded quality level, SP, LP, ELP and the quality of the tape. |
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