I have a large library of VHS tapes of home movies going back all the way to the late 1980s. Last year I decided to start copying them to digital files to preserve them.
I used a Easy VHS to DVD capture device to connect from my old Sharp model VCR to the USB port in my laptop. Using free software I was able to get the videos in digital form on my laptop, but then I would need to run filters through the videos to de-interlace them (remove those lines you sometimes see on old videos) and use other filters to optimize the videos. This took a long time for each video, but the really big pain was that the audio/video sync would be off for every video despite all the settings I tried in the video capture software. That would mean I would have to manually align the video and audio tracks of each and every video using video editing software.
With frustration, I gave up on that project last summer and decided to just buy a refurbished VHS to DVD recorder to copy the VHS tapes to DVD and then convert those DVDs to MP4 video files, hoping that the audio/video sync issues would be gone. Well, do you know how much a refurbished VHS to DVD recorder is? Most of the ones I found were around $300.
I had been debating whether or not to purchase this device. Some of the reviews on Amazon were positive, and some were negative. However, I saw where the issues that people were complaining about had been fixed so I decided to go ahead and purchase it. I got the bundle package that includes the 32 GB USB drive and the video editing software.
On my first few attempts to copy a VHS recording of a trip my wife and I took to Las Vegas in 1998, the video was mostly fine (and the audio and video synchronized perfectly). However, in some places the video was very jittery, especially when the camera would pan from side to side. This was definitely not good news and I thought I was going to have to purchase a refurbished VCR after all. I emailed ClearClick Support about this and actually got a response from Tyler at 10:13 PM Central Time. He said that the jerky/jittery video is due to bad time coding on the part of the tape through the composite (red, white, and yellow) video connection from the camcorder. S-Video signals do not depend on time coding so that type of connection should fix the issue. I don't have an S-Video out on my old Sharp VCR, but he recommended that I purchase this cable to convert the RCA signal to a viable S-Video: https://www.amazon.com/C2G-27965-Bi-Directional-S-Video-Composite/dp/B0002J28KO. I purchased the cable and hooked it up and my old VHS videos now look fantastic (well, as good as they can be for decades old VHS recordings) and no jittery video.
I cannot recommend this device highly enough. It is extremely easy to use and does everything I need it to do. I pop in a videotape, double-check the tracking, and hit the Record button. If I need to pause the recording, I hit the OK button. If I need to un-pause, I hit the OK button again. When I'm done recording, I hit the Recording button again. Then I take out the USB drive, stick it in my latop, and move the MP4 files to my external hard drive to be saved for editing at a later date.
I would also recommend getting the RCA to S-Video cable if you don't have an S-Video out on your VCR, just in case you have jerky/jittery videos like I did. Finally, it's best to use a VCR where you can manually change the tracking of the videotape. My old Sharp VCR has channel up-and-down buttons on the front that I can push to adjust the tracking if there are fuzzy static lines at the top or bottom of the video.
I also have an old Sony Digital-8 Handycam with many more videotapes that I am looking forward to copying to MP4 files using the ClearClick Video to Digital Converter 2.0.
I don't write product reviews on Amazon very often but this is one review that I'm very glad to write for such an excellent product! If you are looking to preserve your old recordings, I cannot recommend the ClearClick Video to Digital Converter 2.0 highly enough.
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