The ULTIMATE VHS Capture Guide

The Ultimate VHS Capture Guide

Your family home videos are slowly deteriorating, it's always best to transfer them to a digital format, however a good amount of people often transfer their tapes in substandard quality. This video will hopefully show you the best method to transfer your tapes.

Table Of Contents
00:00 - Intro
01:14 - Quick Explanation
01:36 - Some Notes Before We Start
05:29 - Software
10:56 - Hardware
15:30 - Processing & Uploading
18:50 - How to Properly Store & Care for your tapes.

Music Used
Wii Fit - Yoga
Sonic 2 - Mystic Cave Zone
The Jetzons - Hard Times
CASIOPEA - Time Limit (From Mint Jams)
Sonic CD - Tidal Tempest Zone Present (JP)
Sonic CD - Tidal Tempest Zone Present (US)
Persona 3 - Afternoon Break

Videos Used/Referenced

[waleedenaya]

This tutorial is so thorough and helpful than any other videos on YouTube. Helped me figure out how to digitalize and save my old family videos. You deserve much more love and views

[DigidexVHS]

This video was insanely useful. Lots of answers to questions I didn't even know I had.

[therealnostalgiarewind]

This was a GREAT video. For the most part my workflow is very similar to yours already but I still learned a few things that I will be trying out. I have been half-assing my post-processing and am happy to get some tips from you on this (your restores always look very nice)

Thanks for the video Notelu!

[corruptedsmurf]

Got an EZ Cap from Amazon and used our old VHS/DVD player combo deck to record, and I was very unsatisfied with the capture quality. After seeing this video (and a few others) I bought a SVHS player, a DVD TBC, a Dazzle video capture card, and even higher end S-Video cables with extra shielding. And wow... it looks terrible. Maybe half the quality of the cheapy mpg rip at best. Followed all the steps. So far I'm just out $300 or so dollars. Don't what I'm doing wrong.
Update: As some people have commented, the latest drivers update to Windows 10 (and 11) mess with the Dazzle series capture card, and no matter how powerful your PC is, it's unavoidable. Pulled out my secondary PC and installed a fresh copy of Windows 10 with no updates. Works great. Also bought S-Cables that were 50ft each on accident. The signal degrades over long distances. Use short fully shielded S-Video and it turns out great. Just like he said.

[alexfulcrumart]

this video is addressing all my vhs-c capturing problems and concerns with uncanny precision. thank you!

[foxlimey]

Glad to see another Oddity Archive fan in the wild

[derrosenkavalier]

Awesome video! I was only looking at those professional-grade, near bank-breaking TBCs before watching this. I'll be sure to go with either of those Panasonic models once I can save up enough for equipment.

Incidentally, I *do* have my trusty old DVC-100 from way back when but plan on upgrading to a micomsoft as I'll be recording old cassette tapes as well. Going to need an SVHS player too, as all I have to work with otherwise is one of those combo VHS/DVD players.

[parishaymakers]

You're such a good person for making this video. Thank you!

[Lfe-ln]

16:27 i want to see the kandi krause song but didnt find the song or video anywhere on web 😢😢😢

[videocaptureguide]

This is a great video. I agree with everything. This is the way, folks. Well done.

[AndrewsMagicandMore]

Thank you SO MUCH for uploading these directions via this video!

[ceebreeeze]

Wow! Incredible value in this vid. Thank you! 🙌🏻

[pikgears]

good thing I didn't find this video until after I already invested in a different setup

[deadeye_john]

I had no idea this video existed before I did my own VHS upload

[Notelu]

As of 2025 Capture Cards are no longer the best, while still good, a Domesday/VHS-Decode setup is often far superior. Look into those if you have the technical knowhow and money to sink in, though probably not worth if you're just transferring one or two tapes or some home movies.

I no longer recommend Virtualdub as the main capture software, would recommend AmarecTV, just make sure to record in a lossless format

The Dazzle DVC100 has been having driver issues involving frame drops on recent versions of Windows 10, please don't use the Dazzle for the time being. I recommend the GV-USB2

A correction by LordSmurf "Disabling frame drops/inserts is the not the proper way to capture. The video will still incur frame speed and drop issues, but simply now not report it. So you're flying blind, and have no idea what's happening to your capture. Since this video was published, forums have had users reporting all sorts of random problems, some of which can be attributed to these exact settings. Don't do that."

Also it might be good on your PC to use HuffYUV or Lagarith instead of UTVideo, as UTVideo requires more CPU overhead, and could cause stutters in the capture on lower power computers.

[emmettonline]

This is a great detailed guide, thanks!

[ctrl-alt-esc]

Thats so good tutorial! Thanks for made this video! :D

[RyouConcord]

Somebody just got a new subscriber.. awesome work, man.

[ahmetarchivos]

Getting TBC in Mexico is extremely rare and expensive. The same applies to those DVD players you mention. if I were in the USA, using eBay would be very affordable those dvd players. I'll have to do everything without a TBC. I have no choice.

[CruziliaAntiga]

The Capture Pin option is disable. What should I do?
Well, the "format" option on video section on Virtualdub is disabled.

Also, when setting custom format, whenever option I choose, it says "the capture device does not support the selected video format"

When I try to capture video, another error message says: "video compressor error: the source image format is not acceptable (error code-2)"

It's odd that some settings are not avaiable for me. Why?

I'm using a Canopus ADVC 110 on Win10 64bit