Hollywood and television have glorified the Cowboy era to the point that most people grow up thinking that it was a constant part of the culture. The truth is that the cowboy era didn't last much longer than the bustle period. Large herds were driven to markets for less than twenty-five years. Then the railroads came to the cows and that was that. Besides, people were settling that land and putting fences on it. (Watch the opening number of the second act of Oklahoma! for a refresher on the conflict between the farmer and the cowman.)

VHS tapes are kind of the same way. Before 1980, they weren't widely used. By 2000, they were dusty from disuse. In between, they revolutionized the way that many families acquired and used entertainment, and they took a huge bite out of the film home movie business. Many of us have VHS tapes that are ten, fifteen, or even twenty-five years old. Those tapes had some relatively lame quality to begin with, and the memories on them are fading every year.

We're talking about archiving digital video here. Today, we're talking specifically about transferring your VHS tapes to digital video. The VHS medium is the easiest to transfer because you've got the least to lose--you don't have much information on those tapes (compared to film, S-VHS, or Hi8 formats) in the first place.

There are many considerations involved in archiving digital video, but VHS doesn't involve many of them. One could worry, with good cause, that the manner you're using to convert your videos is not preserving some important quality that is on the original media. Not so with VHS tapes. You can go for it with a clear conscience.

What's the Setup?
For no good reason, I happen to still own a VCR. Its plays VHS tapes, and it has a set of plain old red, white, and yellow RCA jacks for outputting the sound and picture. The signal starts there. I use a plain old audio patch cord with a bit of a twist. One end of it is the white and the yellow plug, just like you'd expect. The other end looks like a headphone plug (more accurately described as a “mini plug.” (They're smaller than RCA plugs and they have a line in the middle of them where the two signals are divided.) Two signals, you ask? Yes, for headphones, it's left and right. For this transfer, it's video and mono audio.)

I borrowed a Canon ZR-40 camcorder for this experiment. It is a digital camcorder, using Mini DV tapes, but it also has the critical feature I need: “analog pass thru.” I don't even put a tape into it. I connect the micro plug to the “A/V Input” jack.

Now I have signal going from tape to camcorder. One more step will complete the cabling. I used a FireWire cable to connect the camcorder to my desktop computer. FireWire, you might ask? Yes, it's also known as 1394, for some reason that escapes me. They are unusual jacks, shaped like the opening on an old country mailbox, square at the bottom and round at the top. Of course, they don't always put the bottom and top where you'd expect them for a mailbox, but you can recognize one in an instant, assuming you have enough light.

The end of the cable that connects to the camera is a different shaped plug, very small, looking like the USB connection on my digital camera. Don't let the similarity of these jacks fool you. If you have to read the manual to know what you have, make the effort. If the camera you use has a USB connection instead of FireWire, I expect you to figure that out, use the right cable, and attach it to the right port on your computers. If I come to your house and see a bad cabling setup there will be consequences.

Now It's Connected, What Next?
The next thing I had to figure out was how to configure the camcorder to pass the signal through. I downloaded the manual in PDF format from the web. Just Google your brand and model number and the word “manual” and the odds are you will find it. I saw that I needed to use the camcorder's menu to change a setting. I found a MENU button. The menu indicated that I would use up and down arrows and a SET button to make the choices, but I couldn't see any buttons with arrows or the word SET on them. I turned the camera around like I was checking to see if a puppy was a boy or a girl, but saw no arrows and SET. As it happens, the up and down is accomplished by spinning a little ridged plastic wheel. The SET is accomplished by pressing the wheel into the body of the camera – it has some kind of spring fixture.

I gotta tell you, that kind of thing puts the lie to the word “intuitive.” Nothing is intuitive. Not drag and drop. Not using a wheel instead of buttons. Everything you're going to do with a tool, you're going to have to figure out the hard way. Plan on it, expect it, wear the right clothes.

Okay, I've got everything connected and configured. I'm all set, right? Not right. I have to use some program on the computer to capture the video. This particular computer came from Best Buy, and from Compaq before that. When I plugged the camera into the

FireWire port and flipped it to PLAY (VCR) mode, the computer prompted me to do something with it? One of my choices was the Intervideo WinDVD Creator. I didn't know I had such a program, but since my computer came with a DVD burner, it also came with this software. There are a lot of ways to configure this software, and many of them have an effect on the quality of the finished product. For now, I'm working with VHS, and I can safely ignore just about everything until a future article.

WinDVD Creator has a CAPTURE feature that creates an MPEG format file. That's fine for what we're doing, so I click CAPTURE on the desktop. I see a picture of each device that can capture anything, and I click on the Canon ZR-40. Next, I see a capture image.

I go back to the VCR and press play. I see the image on the viewer for the camcorder, and I can also see it on the desktop. I didn't hear any sound at first because I had a cable connected wrong. Once I figured that out and plugged it in right I was ready for my first test.

I clicked RECORD on the computer, and was prompted for a file name. The MPEG file was created in the My Videos folder under My Documents. It recorded until I got tired of it. A 30 minute segment resulted in a file that took up about 500 megabytes of disk space. I had about 130 gigabytes free, and the system assured me that I could only record another 200 hours of tape. 200 hours? I won't need that much.

Why Would I Do That, Again?
I now have a digital recording of my daughter, ten years old, using the granny technique to bowl gutter balls. I have film and sound of pets, long gone, that the kids like to see again. I have the highlights of a hike down Pike's Peak, my daughter going to a prom, my brother in his auto repair shop, my daughter's wedding, my mentor and old college advisor before he passed away, Lake Tahoe before it gets polluted, genealogy buddies at GENTECH ‘99 in Salt Lake City, NGS ‘98 in Denver, and opening day at the ballpark in 1998.

Some of you may have had your home movies converted from film to VHS during the past 20 years. I would go back to the original media, if I had it, and re-convert it to digital. If not, that VHS collection of yours might be the only video link you have to your family's past. Let's get that converted right away!

Links

1. The Virtual Museum of Vintage VCRs (www.totalrewind.org)
Not only do they have old machines, but there is a lot of history and technical info there.

Next time, I'll tell you how many DVDs I wasted learning how to burn one from my VHS tapes.

More Information
If you want to discuss digital video issues, please drop by the RootsWorks Forums at www.rootsworks.com/forums. Registration is free, and I'd be interested to know what you think.

Beau Sharbrough is an employee of MyFamily.com. His articles contain his own views and opinions and do not reflect any corporate policy or statement by the company. He lives in Provo, Utah, where the tulips are out. The RootsWorks series of articles focuses on genealogical applications for generic technologies. Please note that he cannot assist you with your individual computer and genealogy problems. Visit the RootsWorks website (www.rootsworks.com) for links to previous articles and Beau's lecture schedule (next stop: IAJGS in Las Vegas, this July).

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