[VWestlife] bought all types of USB video seize units — lots of them from the early 2000s — and put them by way of their paces in making an attempt to digitize VHS classics like Instantaneous Hearth and Shopping for an Auxiliary Sailboat. The outcomes had been really fairly various, however nearly universally unhealthy. All of them labored, however in addition they introduced disagreeable artifacts and negative effects when it got here to the ultimate outcomes. Positive, the analog supply isn’t all the time the very best high quality, however might it actually be this tough to digitize a VHS tape?
It turns on the market’s an exception to all the frustration: the Sony Digital Video Media Converter (DVMC) is a bit of classic {hardware} launched in 1998 that utterly outperformed the opposite units [VWestlife] examined. There’s a catch, however it’s a small one. Extra on that in a second.
Not like many different seize strategies, the DVMC has a built-in time base corrector that stabilizes analog video alerts by buffering them and correcting any timing errors that may trigger issues like jitter or drift. This can be a characteristic one wouldn’t usually discover on finances seize units, however [VWestlife] says the Sony DVMC will be discovered floating round on eBay for as little as 20 USD. It even has composite and S-Video inputs.
For an previous machine, [VWestlife] says utilizing the DVMC was remarkably clean. It wanted no particular drivers, defaults to analog enter mode, and will be powered over USB. That final one could sound trivial, however it means there’s no fear about missing some proprietary wall adapter with an oddball output voltage.
The catch? It isn’t actually a USB machine, and requires a FireWire (IEEE-1394) port in an effort to work. But when that’s not a deal-breaker, it does a unbelievable job.
So when you’re seeking to digitize older analog media, [VWestlife] says it may be price heading to eBay and digging up a used Sony DVMC. But when one needs to get actually severe about archiving analog media, capturing RF alerts direct from the tape head is the place it’s at.
Because of [Keith Olson] for the tip!
