Elgato Video Capture

A pile of old VHS tapes and video-8 tapes up to 40 years old are rotting away in the attic. Time to digitize. But that's not that simple. Find an old VHS video player and an old Sony video-8 camcorder that can still play those tapes. But then? The solution is the Elgato video capture: in the box it comes with a composite cable and a scart-composite adapter. That goes in the back of the VHS video player. Fit the other end to the Elgato adapter. Then plug the USB (A, unfortunately no USB-C so adapter A-C is needed, but a MacBook user has it as standard...) in the computer. Download the appropriate app software on the Elgato website, launch it and you're done. Turn on the VHS player, press the record button in the software, and wait. You have to play those analog tapes in real time. No possibility of accelerated dubbing, which of course makes sense. Anyway, this works fine, and you don't have to be wrong all the time. You can indicate after how much time you want the recording to stop automatically (useful at night) or you can stop it yourself. Recordings of 3 hours is no problem. The video-8 camcorder must be connected with an S-video cable. This cable is not included. Luckily I have one left. The Elgato itself does have the S-video connection, so you can simply connect to it. Quality is great. Actually, the quality is mainly determined by the VHS player and the camcorder. They have to be unscrewed for a while to clean the heads properly first. Years of collecting dust leave its mark. Nostalgia for the past: a little medical alcohol on a cotton swab and clean the head with it. What also helps is to first fast forward the old tapes and then fast rewind so that the old tape does not stick and runs in the device. Video is saved in mp4 format, so can be used on any computer. An mp4 file of 3 hours with the resolution of yesteryear produces files of approximately 2GB. So no problem. Very satisfied with it. Does what it should do, no more, no less.

Easy to install, good quality!

Stumbled upon a large number of VHS tapes while cleaning up. Because I don't want to lose the images myself, but I don't have a VHS player ready anymore, I digitized the tapes. Works extremely easy. Quality of the video file obviously depends on the quality VHS player and the tape itself.