Railfan Technology > Is there an Easy way to Copy VHS C Tapes to an SD Card for Upload

I have a Bunch of VHS C Tapes that on a Lot of them are Cajon Pass and Tehachapi Railfan trips with a lot of Pacings along Cajon Boulevard and even a short clip of a UP SD70M and a true SD 90MAC Idling away for a few minutes before getting chased out of Taylor Yard.

I was hoping to Digitize these so I could Upload them to You Tube to share but I remember trying this via Tape to DVD which Didn`t really work out the greatest,(This too when You Tube had a 10 minute limit).

I have some Pretty Cool stuff (In My Opinion) such as a Pace up Cajon Blvd with the UP 7547 and 7533 as Delivered as AC6000s,A Pace in San Timeteo Canyon of SP 8566 as a point helper,and Numerous BNSF paces up Cajon Blvd with a variety of post merger BN Stuff,and also the Occasional pool power stuff.

Thanks for any Suggestions,
CT97

There are some companies around that will do it for you.  They will probably copy it to a DVD but once it's digital you can probably copy to any storage format.  I know of one locally and I would guess that any decent size city will have a shop that can do it.  I don't know what the cost is.  Some of them will do it for you and others will let you use their equipment and do it yourself.  If you only have a few tapes it might be the best way to go.  If you're looking at doing a bunch of tape it might be better to find a software/hardware package to do it.

I looked at the website for a local company, "Video Kitchen."  It looks like they charge $24 to convert one tape to a DVD.  I know they used to let you do the work yourself years ago but it looks like they do it all now.  If you have 3 or 4 tapes, or more, it would probably be cost effective to buy an interface to connect your tape player to a computer and purchase the required software.  There's quite a bit of information if you Google "vhs to dvd"  or "vhs to dvd yourtown"

Hope this is somewhat helpful.

John

I converted all my VHS tapes to digital using a converter.  There are many different models out there.  The one thing you need to prepare for is storage.  When you convert a VHS tape to digital it results in huge files.  I had a lot of tapes (over 30) that I converted.  In order to do so, I needed to purchase some external drives to store them on.  I used a couple of 4TB external hard drives so I could archive on one and then back up onto another in case one of the HD's crashes.

I converted some of my tapes from the 1980's and I noticed that the oldest ones had started to deterioriate.  So the posts you read about VHS tapes not lasting forever are very true.  I'm glad I caught mine in time while they were still watchable.

Good luck!

Do a search for analog capture cards or adapters.  There are some that are PCI cards that you'd install inside your computer, others plug in via USB.   Anything that has RCA outputs (your old camera or a VCR) can then be captured via that hardware. 

This may work..who knows?
http://www.boardwalkbuy.com/products/vhs-to-digital-file-converter-for-windows-os
 

First thing, do you have a VHS player that plays the VHS-C tapes?
If so, then get 2TB or 4TB hard drives, (I would suggest the WD brand), and this converter to get the signal from the player into the computer.
Elgato Systems USB Analog Video Capture Device     http://goo.gl/ipOGNO
If you do not want to do this work, (and media conversion IS work) I have had success with Southtree doing conversions. https://southtree.com/video-to-dvd
Have fun!

Dennis Livesey
New York, NY

Thanks for all the replys.

It will most likely be a "Me" doing it conversion,as I can break the files as I want to,,not just one continuous DVD.I want to section them to make them uploadable to You Tube type of viewing,Our Pace runs up Cajon Boulevard usually averaged 15-20 minutes depending on If the train was at Track speed or slower.There are some Short bits of idling engine stuff etc.

Just finding the time to sit,play and record while doing so is the hard part.

I`ll look into all the suggestions,,Thanks so Much.
CT97

What I did was convert the VHS tapes into a continuous large file, (one file per VHS tape), store it on an HD, then using a video program (I used Windows MovieMaker) cut the file into smaller segments usually based on a date or location and saved as individual mpegs.  Then I was able to upload to YouTube.  For an example, look up the GIMRRC channel on YouTube and view some of the older videos like the RF&P or NS Steam 1989. 

I found this method much easier than trying to stop and start VHS tapes and making a bunch of files while converting.  Granted, the files are huge, but they are much easier to split into smaller mpegs later.  Your mileage may vary...hope this helps.

Some How To info at this site you might find interesting:

http://www.simplevideoediting.com/transfer-tape/digital-file/

CT97 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Thanks for all the replys.
>
> It will most likely be a "Me" doing it
> conversion,as I can break the files as I want
> to,,not just one continuous DVD.I want to section
> them to make them uploadable to You Tube type of
> viewing,Our Pace runs up Cajon Boulevard usually
> averaged 15-20 minutes depending on If the train
> was at Track speed or slower.There are some Short
> bits of idling engine stuff etc.
>
> Just finding the time to sit,play and record while
> doing so is the hard part.
>
> I`ll look into all the suggestions,,Thanks so
> Much.
> CT97

I suggest doing some Internet research on analog to Firewire converter boxes, which is platform-indepedent - most Macs support it, and Windows from Vista and newer should support it. What's great is that you can import your clips almost directly into your favorite video editor. Some editors even allow you control on which video codecs to use for storage/compression. They are available both secondhand and new, and if you shop around, they are not expensive, $150 - $200 range, seen some priced lower.

Many of the analog to USB converters lock you into a certain codec (MPEG-2 for the older ones), and with the ever-unnecessary upgrades on Mac OS X and Windows, you might want to avoid those. Same goes for PCI card converters. I've seen many hardware devices become unsupported from operating system upgrades, especially Windows 10.