VHS (or tapes) VS DVD and DETERIORATION!!!! (Gasp!)

[Nightposter]

In a discussion on another forum I was in, the subject of "Have you looked at your video tapes lately?" came up, afterward I was shocked to see that I'm loosing or have lost some of my treasured private custom tapes due to deterioration of the tape medium.

Some of these are "gifts" I had received as thank yous for lending or providing uniforms to producers for both vids for sale, and for private, custom vids, like the kind UKSG has done.
(I said that to get your feelings on this UKSG) some are old bought and paid for movies both of our fetish and even mainstream movies.. One vid tha degraded to the point of being unwatchable was the original "Star Trek - the Movie" VHs tape that I bought new.

Some are on high end VHS tapes recorded with professional recorders, others were done with off the shelf cam 'corders and cheap K-mart tapes, or mass produced on un branded tapes.

I actually had one that I had to stop and clean the heads on the VCR as the oxide was falling off the backing as I played it.
My tape are stored according to long published, approved standards of tape storage, but since one can not store them air tight, they have been subject to changes in temp. and humidity over the years.

I am now in a mad dash to convert my "un replaceables" to dvd. I purchased this gizmo from Best Buy that converts the output of my VCR to the input of my 'puter so I can upload the vids to my hard drive and try and save them to DVD.
Any body have to do this?
the gizmo I bought is called "dazzle" by Pinnacle, but I have been told the software isn't the best and I could use other software with this device...
Any thoughts???

[tOkie]

For the amount you paid (I am presuming, less than $100.00) it is likely your best choice. I have seen some other apps that resemble this one. The quality and dependability, I can only guess at, according to the price. Here's a website with some comparisons: http://dvr.about.com/od/capturetvwithac ... dvdrec.htm

The only other suggestion I have is a VHS to DVD recording unit, which, depending on if you buy new or used, can price from $50.00 (pawn shop) to $350.00 and beyond.

[Nightposter]

My main reason of running it into either my Mac or my PC is to try and clean up some of what has happened, in other words, restore and custom edit .
In a couple of the custom tapes I have been gifted with, there are scenes I do not want to see, so I can get rid of them, combine a couple of these into one disc etc.
I have looked into both Roxio and Nero, Roxio 's Toast is on my Mac and I have Nero 7 on my pc - both of these for burning cd's and work well, so I'd consider products from either company for doing DVD's...Roxio also allows editing with it's software.....

I do have the vcr/ dvd recorder, but the finished disc looks worse than the original tape.

[Bluestone]

NP,

I use Roxio's Videowave to assemble my videos after using Ulead MediaStudio Pro to do the f/x together with other software products. So, for editing, I.M.H.O. the Roxio product is acceptable.

As for tapes, I had this discussion with Paul of KHP about DV tapes. As I said on another thread, I have over 100 videos on DV tape. I do have them in a climate-controlled area, but what do people think is the lifespan of these tapes? Is it 10 years... less... more?

There you go... question answered, question posed

Blue

[tOkie]

Nightposter

Understood re: VHS to DVD recorders and the outcome. Unfortunately, the tape medium has always been a flawed system of film recording and preservation. 20 years is maximum for video tape use span, given the utmost perfect conditions. In reality, most VHS tape average use span is going to top out around 10 years. Since Digital Video has not been around long enough to have an accurate gauge of it's real use span, we can only approximate where that average will top out. As with any physical medium, there will always be deterioration factors, ie: temperature, humidity, dust, scratches and breakage. Even digital storage by electronic media ie: hard drives, are prone to catastrophic failure.

Multiple back-up systems are the only real alternative. For instance, I have vinyl albums backed up by reel to reel tapes, 8-tracks, cassettes, cd's and now mp3 and mp4 technologies. No matter how cautious I am in their storage and handling...vinyl scratches, tapes stretch and break and cd's (with the exception of hiss, wow and flutter) have no more audio clarity in db's, than that of an 8-track.

Oh! my...questions are answered yet, more are raised.

[Big O]

I hooked up my vcr to a Panasonic dvd recordder and successfully transferred around 200 movies to dvd. You can get a great Panasonic dvd recorder for around $175...

O