VHS-C to VHS adapters

Jimmy King

It has been requested that I convert some old VHS-C videos to DVD. The camera used to record these is no longer around to just use it to play back. The easiest to find adapter is a pretty cheap Maxell one with a lot of people bitching about it on amazon. Is there a specific adapter anyone can recommend or a specialty store/website someone can recommend which might have better options?

As I think about this more, I'm also not against getting a used/refurbished VHS-C camcorder and just running the video/audio out on that to the recording hardware.

Endaro

I guess it depends on whether you're interested in the control and potential cost savings of doing it yourself, or outsourcing it. Unfortunately, I have no advice for converting it yourself. When I had it done about a year ago (also VHS-C to DVD), I sent it off to have it done for me. There are companies out there dedicated to converting family movies and such to modern media, you can find them pretty easily on Google. You might also be able to take them to where you get your film/photos developed (people still do that right?). I took mine to my local Costco, they handle it in their photo processing area. On the upside, the video files on the DVD's are easily accessed if you want to remake them in to your own less-generic DVD's. On the downside, it can take some time, as it gets shipped off and processed, and it might be cheaper to just buy your own adapter, though I've never looked at the prices for those.

How many are you looking to convert? That's certainly a factor for buying the adapter vs sending them off, as they tend to charge by the cassette.

Zoku Gojira

Man, whoever asked you to do this conversion waited a long-ass time to do it. As in, you won't even find the shit you need to get it done at retailers, these days.

If you're doing this as a favor for someone, buy the Maxell adapter with the shitty reviews and roll with it. The reviews are probably from young people used to seeing digital-to-digital copies, anyway.

If you're being asked to provide a nearly flawless transfer then A ) advise that this is nearly impossible and B ) that this will require more of an investment than whatever they initially offered, and then get a quote from someone who does this professionally. If that's over their budget, then go back to the adapter with the bad reviews and they can suck it up. On the bright side, anything new they shoot digitally shouldn't have this problem going forward.

Jimmy King

Yeah, I had looked awhile back and I think it was some combination of cost and most of the websites looking like half-assed tossed together crap (web dev is what I do, I have a hard time trusting companies who couldn't invest in a website that doesn't look like they bought a $15 template in 2001 and paid a 16 year old to put it together to put any more effort into anything else they do, but that's a whole different discussion). Not just buying the easiest to find cheap crap available to do it myself was part of that, though, so I may need to do some more digging to find a professional company that I do trust to do it if the only equipment I can find is cheap junk.

@Zoku Gojira eh, it's old videos my wife thought to be long lost of her family. Her mom died a few years ago and her dad just died last week, so I'd kind of better do it. Her expectations are realistic, she just wants to be able to watch them and not have them on old tapes that if not already ruined certainly will be and finding a way to moderinize them isn't going to get easier as time goes on. We've been going to do this for a few months now, but now she really wants them done.

Zoku Gojira

Yeah, that's worth doing right. And in that light, it would seem the best reason for finding someone reliable to do it would be to avoid losing the recordings once again or having them damaged by rough handling. Sorry for making light of the situation.

AngelHedgie

Costco has a conversion service - my family has used it, and the conversion (8mm family films to DVD) came out nice. It's worth looking into.

Jimmy King

Zoku Gojira wrote: »

Yeah, that's worth doing right. And in that light, it would seem the best reason for finding someone reliable to do it would be to avoid losing the recordings once again or having them damaged by rough handling. Sorry for making light of the situation.

Yeah, I'm definitely hoping to find somewhere local (the Costco idea may work, I've been intending to join Costco anyway) so that I don't have the risks of shipping the tapes around, which I believe was another reason I initially leaned towards doing it myself (The reasons come to me as I think about it, I decided to do it myself and moved on, mostly forgetting about the actual reasons). I'll definitely have a look at Costco and have also found another local place which does it here in town which I will look into.

Daenris

I stongly suspect that most local chain places that will do this probably just mail the tapes out to a central location to do the actual conversion. This is definitely how it used to be done at a Walgreens that I worked at. So it does avoid the hassle of YOU shipping them, but they're still being sent somewhere if that's your worry.

Jimmy King

@Daenris good point which I did not consider, Costco probably does ship them to a central place. They probably (hopefully?) do a better job of packaging them in a safe way than I am likely to, though, and possibly even ship them on their own trucks where they hopefully handle them relatively carefully and have more control over that than just shipping through the mail so it may still be a good route for me to go.

azith28

Try looking in amazon not for an actual player of that format but a standard VHS tape that the VHS-C unit snaps into. its like a tape inside of a tape setup. I vaguely recall these existing back in the day.

Jimmy King

Yeah, those are what I was looking at initially. The only one readily available is a super cheap ass one that I don't trust.

halkun

wait.. are you talking about the VHS adapter where you drop in the little VHS-C inside and pop into a VHS player?

There is no such thing as a "crappy" one. All those adapters do is pull the VHS-C tape around the VHS sized spindles so your full-sized VHS machine can read it. They don't convert anything.

Analog video has a resolution of around 512x240 (not counting interlace) so it's going to look like crap when it's blown up to digital sizes anyway. Grab the adapter and be done with it.

Jimmy King

I'm not worried about video quality, that's obviously going to be crap. I'm worried about it being more likely to destroy the tape because it doesn't quite align things properly, etc. That seems to be what most people on amazon are complaining about with the one that is available.