If you decide to start dubbing video tapes to discs or computer hard drive, you can do it at home using free applications. Also, keep in mind that the quality of a video tape will degrade over time, so the faster you digitize the video, the better.
Necessary
- - video card with video input;
- - at least 3 GB of free hard disk space;
- - sound card;
- - VirtualDub program.
Instructions
Step 1
Connect your camcorder to the output of your video card to start digitizing your video. Connect the audio cable to the sound card. Go to the "Control Panel", then select the sound settings and the "Hardware acceleration" option, set the sampling quality for playing and recording sound to the maximum value. Click the Advanced button, go to the Performance tab, move the pointer to the far right. Do the same with Sound Recording.
Step 2
Launch the VirtualDub application, set the settings for capturing video from the tape. Press the F9 key, check the box in the Capture audio option, set the number of frames per second - 25. Set the value of the Audio buffer size parameter to 10240 bytes.
Step 3
Next, go to the Capture / Preferences menu, select the desired device for video capture, also specify where the file will be recorded after digitizing the video. It is advisable to write the file to a clean NTFS formatted partition. The folder name must contain only English characters.
Step 4
If necessary, set the conditions under which capturing will stop: for example, file size or recording time, free disk space, exceeding a certain percentage of lost frames. This can be done in the Capture / Stop Conditions menu.
Step 5
Go to the Audio / Compression menu, select audio compression codecs, or adjust uncompressed audio. Select PCM format, 16 bit. To set up video capture, go to the Video / Format menu. Set the video stream resolution in the left menu, and the color depth and compression type in the right menu.
Step 6
Use YUY2 format. Also select a codec for video compression. When the settings are set, press the F6 key and after a few seconds start playing the video on the camera. Information about the capture process will be displayed on the right in the program. After the video is finished, click Esc and you will get a digitized video.
