[G4] Uploading VHS Tapes

[Craig Turner]

Kevin,

I just did some transfers of VHS to an external firewire hard drive, 
using a borrowed Canopus device. On  a 120 Gig HD, I used Final Cut Pro 
to record around three hours of video--this is uncompressed, full 
quality. For 100 VHS tapes (2 hours or so each?) you will need a LOT of 
hard drive space for storage or, more likely, just do a tape or two at 
a time and then record to DVD as you go.

I translate the recorded tapes from my firewire drive to MPEG-1 format 
that seems to work well with DVD Studio Pro, which is where I create 
DVDs for storage. You could use Toast, of course, instead. The MPEG-1 
is very decent quality and substantially reduces storage requirements, 
though you may still be surprised to find how much video you can 
actually get on a standard DVD!! You will not be able to record one 
whole video VHS to a DVD (assuming it is 1 1/2 to 2 hours in length), 
no way.

HTH,
Craig Turner

On Sep 25, 2004, at 7:10 PM, Kevin Willis wrote:

> I am interested in coping all of my kids VHS tapes to my G4.  I am 
> hoping to do away with the bulky tapes laying around the house.  Does 
> anybody have an idea what kind of hard drive space a full length movie 
> would take up on a hard drive?  Is there a program for a Mac that will 
> shrink them down?  I would like for them to be in a format that allows 
> me to burn them to a playable DVD if I ever want to.   They have about 
> 100 VHS tapes right now.  Is it possible to fit them all on 1 or 2 
> hard drives?
>
> Thanks--
>
> Kevin
>
> _______________________________________________
> G4 mailing list
> G4 at listserver.themacintoshguy.com
> http://listserver.themacintoshguy.com/mailman/listinfo/g4
>