VHS era is winding down

[Zoidberg]

What's a VHS?

Seriously, though, if you convert a lot of movies to DVD, ditto on Kraniac's "keep the originals" comment. DVDs will crap out on you at some point; have seen it happen already with some less-than-par video transfers done about 10 years back (wife's old karate school).

Best bet is this: transfer to Mac, edit onto a nice DVD for regular viewing, but shelf (per se) the VHS and keep the digital copy on your Mac (which is regularly backed up, right?).

Once the AppleTV Homebase® XServe™ comes out, you can upload it there and everyone you give access to it (worldwide) will be able to view it. Beauty, eh?

[Mike Sellers]

Kraniac wrote:
Just be aware...if you have stuff archived on VHS that you copied to DVD as a future archive....

Do not throw out that VHS tTape is an excellent archive material...better than almost anything.

You home burned DVD's are not reliable at all. In fact, they are detined to crap out on you.

Hard drives are much better but tape is excellent.

A few years ago I took all my VHS home movies and copied them to mini-DV tapes via my Sony camcorder. That way I also have a digital copy of them all. And I recently hooked my old Panasonic VHS back up because my kids wanted to see these movies of themselves. It's amazing how well they've held up, considering most are 10 years old and older. Color is still pretty vibrant. I didn't notice any fading.

[Robert M]

Mike,

I hear you. I archived some VHS to DVD with a VHS/DVD Recorder combo machine and was surprised at how well the old tapes had held up over the years. 'course, much easier to convert them to a digital format once they're on DVD. Just toss them into my Mac, rip until done. No muss, no fuss.

Robert

[Mac-A-Matic]

I don't know how good VHS over the long term.

Was watching some tapes from 1993 just yesterday and they're starting to fail. Image dropouts, fading, degradation.

At some point in time, all media dies.

[mikebw]

Image quality on VHS also degrades with use, so every time you watch it gets a little worse.

Of course if you don't have any devices to play the tape then there is no point in keeping the tapes around either.

[Blurb]

[quote=Zoidberg]
..... Best bet is this: transfer to Mac, edit onto a nice DVD for regular viewing, but shelf (per se) the VHS and keep the digital copy on your Mac (which is regularly backed up, right?)./quote]

Just curious, but what sw is everybody using for this right now? Toast? Handbrake? iDVD??

[BigGuynRusty]

Blurb wrote:
[quote=Zoidberg]
..... Best bet is this: transfer to Mac, edit onto a nice DVD for regular viewing, but shelf (per se) the VHS and keep the digital copy on your Mac (which is regularly backed up, right?).

Just curious, but what sw is everybody using for this right now? Toast? Handbrake? iDVD??
I use iMovie to input and edit, using a camcorder for the Analog to Digital (FireWire) conversion.
Toast to burn to DVD.

BGnR

[Rolando]

Gotta agree w/Tape backup.

[ajakeski]

Anything of importance is on Mini DV.