There's certainly endless amounts of information about this online but I thought I'd share my own personal experience.
 |
| 'Click and convert' Hardware by CnM Lifestyle electronics with software by Arcsoft (2007) |
In the 2000's I was using a dektop computer. I had a collection of UK issue pre-cert VHS tapes and wanted to convert them to a digital format. I bought a VHS to digital converter kit which included software by Arcsoft called Showbiz, around 2007. This worked really well but I never got around to copying many VHS tapes because it took so long. Being a desktop computer, it had many different inputs and a seperate sound card.
Fast foward to 2025 and I decided to convert my set of first edition Star Wars trilogy VHS cassettes to a digital format. The Star Wars (A New Hope) VHS was the first time it was made available to watch at home. This was for rental only, so the condition is surprisingly good for a tape which is 42 years old and could have been watched hundreds of times.
That's when it started to get rather complicated.
A while ago I discovered that my new HP Dragonfly laptop did not have a sound card. The original Showbiz software came with cables including a standard USB A and an audio jack for the sound. Well, there was no audio input on my laptop so I found I couldn't get any audio, even with the USB.
I hastily went online and purchased another similar 'kit' with software by 'Honsetech'. Well, the software has proved to be almost useless and I paid what I consider alot of money for something which is probably made in China for about $5.
 |
| I would NOT recommend this product |
A few years ago I explored all sorts of other options including using my PowerDirector software and Open Broadcaster Software (OBS). I had mixed success using these.
This time I tried a different approach which turned into bit of a project. I still had an old Dell Inspiron 640m laptop. This had two audio jack sockets, one for headphones and one for a microphone. I thought this would allow me to record the audio, which was missing when I tried recording with my newer laptop.
Over the years I had used my old Dell for experimenting by installing Windows 98 and later a version of Linux to play some old computer games. The Dell still had the sticker underneath with the Windows licence key for Windows Vista. I decided to try and re-instal this with the intention of then installing my old Showbiz software, which should be compatible.
Despite having the Windows product key for Vista, I didn't have any reinstall discs. Fortunately I was able to download a complete version of Vista service pack 2.
This worked but I soon realised that I should 'activate' the Windows Vista licence to ensure I maintained all it's features. I had just 3 days to do this.
Fortunely I found a good video on Youtube which was how to register a copy of Windows Vista in 2023. It was no longer possible to do this online, but it could be done by telephone. To my surprise, the paid for telephone line was still open and I was able to follow voice activated commands to complete the activation successfully.
Firstly I checked my Star Wars tape on a LG DVD/VHS video cassette recorder (VCR) which fortunately I already had. I was rather shocked to see how bad the quality was. However, after running the tape throught the VCR a few times, it seemed to improve and stabalise.
I was ready to start recording the video using Arcsoft Showbiz. The audio jack with the 'dongle' did indeed produce audio when used in the microphone input jack, as I was hoping.
I hooked up to a spare Television but later realised you don't even need to play it through the TV. You can simply connect the cable between the VCR and computer. There's a preview panel in Showbiz which allows you to see the video being played.
Despite the Arcsoft Showbiz software being 18 years old, it's still significantly better then the much newer Honestech software I purchased just a few years ago.
Just when I thought everything was going fine, a pop-up message appeared saying "Copyrighted video detected. Recording not allowed" and it stopped recording. I tried several times again but this message always appeared once or twice during the recording.
I read many forums, offering many suggestions on how to bypass the analogue protection system used on some VHS tapes aka Macrovision or Copyguard. None of these worked for me and I didn't want to spend any more money of gadgets which may, or may not work.
Analog Protection System - Wikipedia
The only way I solved this was to record chunks of the film and then use my PowerDirector 15 editing software to paste it all back together again. This was quite alot of work involving editing at single frame level to join the parts together successfully. It was a long process, but it worked and I finally had the full VHS film version as it was in 1982, in a digital format.
I decided to keep one full version in it's original format and produce another one which had 'de-noise' and colour correction applied.
Unfortunately there was still four minutes within the film where the tape had intererence and 'jumping' which I couldn't correct. Otherwise, I was satisfied with the outcome.
There's still a huge number of 'kits' for converting VHS to digital availble. Nearly all of these are over-priced, and may not even work. I would suggest spending time to research these, read reviews and ensure compatiability with your own computer.
