Archive Copy
Protected VHS Tapes
Wondering what to do with all those old VHS tapes? Compared with DVDs they are bulky and take up space. Some VHS tapes may be approaching 30 years old. They won't last forever and you want to preserve your investment. The answer is to copy the tapes onto a newer, more durable digital format. You are within your legal right to create backups of original VHS tapes you purchased for the purpose of preventing further damage to the original. Too bad copy protection stands in your way of doing this. This guide will offer practical steps toward a solution.
Instructions
1. Determine your archive medium. Media used for archival purposes should be a durable, well-established format. The advantage of digital formats is that they are generally backwards compatible. In other words, the newer technologies will play the older digital formats. For example, high-definition Blu-Ray players will also play DVDs. For this reason, consider archiving your VHS tapes to DVD or digital files you can store on your hard drive.
2. Defeat the copy protection on your VHS tapes. This may not be as difficult as you think. You need to buy an external device that corrects the outgoing video signal from VHS tapes that use Macrovision copy protection. These video correction devices consist of video enhancement or time base corrector (TBC) components. Due to the aging technology, many of these units are no longer being manufactured. You can buy used units at online auction sites or from sellers of used video equipment.
3. Purchase and install an MPEG encoder card or external device for your computer. These devices are fairly inexpensive and will convert the analog video signal from your VCR to a digital file format used by DVDs. External devices simply plug into your computer's USB port. Internal cards will need to be installed in your computer's internal expansion slot. Make sure the device accepts RCA video inputs, the same as are used on your VHS player.
4. Connect the devices. Your video output from the VCR will plug into the correction unit mentioned in Step 2 using an RCA video cable. Then plug the correction unit into the MPEG encoder device. Audio from the VCR can plug directly into your computer or MPEG device.
5. Use the software supplied with your MPEG encoder device and capture the video played back from the VCR to a digital file. This software should include options for adjusting the compression quality of the video so that you can, if you wish, reduce the quality to fit more files on your hard drive or DVD. VHS video quality was not that great to begin with, so you may not notice the effect of lowering the quality settings during capture.
Tags: your computer, copy protection, MPEG encoder, Archive Copy, Archive Copy Protected