How can I get my old VHS home movies into a video format suitable for uploading to YouTube?

Question

I have several old VHS home movies that I'd like to put on YouTube, but I don't know how to get the videos onto my computer. I'm not very "tech-savvy", so I'm not looking for a solution that requires a lot of specialized hardware or software. The truth is, I don't have a lot of patience for that kind of thing. Ideally, it would be great if there was some kind of service available that would do this kind of work. I see a number of companies out there that will copy my old tapes to DVD, but they seem to charge a lot and don't offer to put the video in the format that it needs to be in for posting to YouTube. I also don't want to pay a lot of money for this. I'd really like to find something that's like a "photomat" (remember those places?) for videos. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Get an analog converter like the dazzle. It works great for me. I have a VCR hooked up to the dazzle and then the dazzle hooked to my PC. The dazzle is around 60.00. It comes with some great software that you will have to learn how to use.

You do lose quality when converting VHS (analog) to PC (digital). But VHS tapes degrade with time so converting them will save your precious home movies.

Answer 2

buy a vhs convertor, they are about $60, u can find it at best buy or circuit city

Answer 3

you get what you pay for. If you want cheap go on to ebay and type in "vhs to dvd" and several companies will come up, some as cheap as $10 a video. The problem with these el-cheapo solutions is that vhs degrades and analog is a much more forgiving media than digital. Youtube is digital. So you get poor quality conversions for those dirt cheap prices. The ones you complain about (such as mine) have sophisticated equipment with digital audio and video noise reduction filters on them, also Time Base Correctors which reduce movement and resync the alignment of the two frames in each frame that make up analog. With that kind of conversion, you get a BETTER video than the one on your VHS tape. Cheap is not always what you want and some times you wind up being dissatisfied with the quality of what you bought. Also, I'll toss in a format that will upload to youtube and give you my super-special onsale price of $20 plus actual shipping cost for up to 1 hour of video. Money-back guarantee!

Answer 4

I think that PixelHAT (http://www.pixelhat.net) is exactly the service that you're looking for.  You can have your VHS tapes converted to YouTube ready content for $5 per tape.  That charge is for the entire tape, there are no per hour or other hidden costs either, and the shipping rates are reasonable too.  Also, PixelHAT will convert videos from multiple formats (VHS, VHS-C, Hi-8, MiniDV, DVD, etc...) to multiple formats (YouTube, iPod, DVD, etc...).  Check it out, I think this is just what you need!

Answer 5

You can try the all-in-one great DVD and video software, meet all your needs. It converts DVD's and videos to play on almost any portable device including iPod, iPhone, Zune, PSP, video capable MP3 players, video capable mobile phones, and Pocket P.C., etc. Meanwhile, it can also support output almost any audio/video format including Video format(H264, MP4, WMV, AVI, MOV, RM, 3GP, flv, SWF, mpeg-1, mpeg-2, VCD, SVCD, DVD, etc.) and Audio format(AC3, AAC, MP2, MP3, MP4, RA, WMA, etc.).

http://www.youtubetoipod.org/cucusoft-ul...

Also, you can google some other software:

http://www.google.com