Digital VCR that transfers footage from VHS tapes to hard drive

VHS is analog. You cannot transfer it digitally.

Best way is to get a hardware encoding TV card. Connect the VCR via s-video if it available, otherwise you are stuck with composite connector. Use the software that comes with the card to record the tapes into Mpeg2 or whatever format the card encodes.

Just to clarify one point, analog to digital recording is always done in real time. So, if you have 50 hours of tape to convert, it will take 50 hours to capture.

I've never tried it but would a JVC-DVHS deck connected via firewire to a display playback a VHS tape or does it need to also be connected via analog connection?

Depending on how many tapes you have you could just have Lightning Dubs do it for you. I think they are in Burbank. That way you know it will be done right with professional equipment.

I'm not aware of any high speed VHS dubbing equipment.

If quality isn't critical then you could buy 3 or 4 VHS to DVD machines. Later you can rip the DVDs to the PC for editing. Editing a DVD is a bit slow, but it is possible.

~Jay

You may look into using this:

http://www.plextor-europe.com/produc...oice=PX-AV200U

You'll need to read the manual to be sure it does what you want it to do. Sometimes decks like that don't output analog VHS via the digital outputs.

Pinnicle and Canopus make nice capture devices at many different price/quality/feature points.

In some cases simple TV tuner cards will encode direct to the final mpeg format you may want to archive in.

Mpeg can be almost any bit rate. An hour at a good DVD quality is between 3 and 4 GBs.

200 hours x an average of 3.5GB = 700 GB. Good thing 750GB drives are getting cheaper

~Jay

I'm going to guess that the iLink port on that JVC is only for transferring digital video to/from a DV camcorder.

As Jay said, you'll have to check the manual as far as how it will output analog video, but even if it does go through the HDMI port, I'm not aware of any HDMI capture cards on the market (since HDMI, in conjunction with HDCP, is all about not being able to copy material).

Honestly, that machine is probably overkill. An SVHS JVC unit with a built-in time base corrector will do just as good of a job, if not better, as it will be optimized for an analog signal.