Seeking some urgent advice/recommendations from fellow RapidWeaver users about getting an old VHS videotape posted up on my webpage: https://inochi-life.net/studio.html
(1) From your own experience, what would be the best way to transfer an old VHS tape (NTSC format) to a digital file? What software would be best for such a transfer, and which digital format would be best to use? (ex., mov, mp4, and so on)
(2) And once the video file is transferred to a digital format, which RapidWeaver stack would you recommend for presenting with the video with a lighthouse effect (expanding the video by clicking on a link)? There are a number of RW video-related stacks out there, but which specific RW stacks have you have good luck with in the past when it comes to digital video?
Many thanks in advance for your guidance on this issue!
MP4 would be best but there are programs to convert between formats.
QuickTime Pro 7 just stopped working because it is 32 bit and Catalina is 64 bit only, So I keep a copy on an external with Mojave. It was my go-to program for many things video…
If you can connect the VHS player to your computer, there are several programs that can capture the screen as it’s played, I haven’t done it in a long time so no help there with"connectivity" of your VHS.
Look at Capto for an easy screen capture program…
Once you get the video digitized there are many good RW stacks too choose from. That’s the easy part!
You’ll need some way of capturing the video, for VHS very few machines have Firewire out to be able to capture direct to a Mac in iMovie or Final Cut Pro, so you’ll need additional hardware. A better (cheaper) option would be to find a local video enthusiast or a local video transfer agent who can produce an mp4 for you. drop the mp4 into your resources folder if you’re going to host it yourself or use YouTube and a simple link.
Yes, you might find a Windows friend who has a video card which will accept the right input cables and go from there. I can’t remember a modern Mac that has those cable inputs like the old SCSI Power PC 7600 Macs in which they were still part. There are still some shops that will transfer it for you, one in my town I think…
A composite or S video (the usual connections) from a VHS machine to FW800? I’d be interested to see one of those.
Blackmagic makes a composite/component input card for Mac, they can be found on eBay at reasonable prices, but IMO it’d still be a cheaper option to find an enthusiast or local shop to convert it unless you have many VHS tapes to do.
I’ve done quite a few tapes and tried various different ways to digitise tape. In the end I got a couple of these. The main advantage for me is that it is a stand alone device and therefore doesn’t take up a computer. DIGITNOW!
I attempted it some years ago. I had an iBook G4 and was loaned a Firewire > A/V composite adapter manufactured by ‘Monster’. Originally intended for recording video game play.
I managed to hook it up to an old VHS and with some shareware conversion software, pull the signal through to the iBook. It worked okay, but I remember that the completed video was only 360p, big black bars down each side, and the audio was a long way out of sync with the video. It was quite disappointing and I don’t think I kept any of the footage.
I’m willing to bet the technology has come on much further. There certainly are companies around that do professional video conversions and restorations. It is pretty amazing the ‘remastering’ a lot of record companies have managed to do in recent years for rock bands taped in the 70s and 80s. When you pull up some of the video on VEVO / YouTube at 4K, it looks and sounds as good as anything recorded yesterday.
Hosting video; either use YouTube / Vimeo or host it yourself as MP4 files. There are plenty of stacks around to create custom video players and lightboxes. If it’s personal / family video content, you may prefer to host it yourself. Or set is as unlisted on YouTube.
They’re asking for analog to digital. Composite/S video to fw800 would be analog to analog. I didn’t see an Apple serial number posted anywhere, so there is no way to lookup which Mac they have.