Digitizing audio cassettes and vhs

[mello]

Hi, I want to archive a number of cassettes and old vhs tapes. I am petty competent about computers, but a newbie dealing with conversion and restoration. I am going to try to keep costs down, so I'll avoid expensive pro level software. For audio: Nakamichi BX-300 deck, bought used sat idle long time, but seems to work fine, I'm looking at buying a Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi sound card with a front panel breaker box w/RCA inputs, open to suggestions about software for noise filtering, anyone have experience with Audacity (freeware), BIAS soundsoap, or Nero. I see that some people like SoundForge. I assume that the front stereo inputs on a box will result in less interference than the minijack on the soundcard at the rear of the case. I asked Creative tech support how box to card 26 pin ribbon cable is shielded form noise inside the case, but I have to get a reply. For video, my pc is fast, Core2duo e6600, 2 GB Ram, Hauppauge pvr 150 tv tuner pci card, and Premiere elements 3.0. These tapes, both cassette and vhs, are 10-15 years old, kept in pretty dry climate-Los Angeles. The Hauppage card will convert to MPEG, hardware conversion. Will such compressed video be impossible to clean up at all? Do I need to import as AVI or similar or can I work in MPEG? If I have to import as AVI or similar what best convertor-Canopus (pricey), or Pinnacle, Pyro, or other. Thanks in advance!

 

[Adam]

mello, hi and welcome to the forum.

Just want to share my experience with converting audio tapes to computer files (I haven't done video, yet). I have a Sound Blaster Audigy 2ZS and used the minijack on the card itself because it has no front panel. I used a stereo minijack to dual-RCA converter cable and hooked up my Onkyo tape deck to it. I just used the Creative software that can be downloaded from their website. I think that it worked just fine. Now, it's quite possible that I'm not as critical of my music, but I recommend giving Creative's free software (well, it comes with a purchase of a sound card) a try and see what you think.

 

[MDS]

I haven't done it in awhile but I used the same approach as Adam except for the fact that I'm a longtime Sound Forge user and bought an el cheapo single deck tape deck from Radio Shack.

If you use a decent audio editor and get the levels set right without clipping you can clean it up easily. Record the entire side of the tape as one file and then split it into tracks, fade-in, fade-out, noise reduction, etc.

I've never done video but I think Sound Forge records as AVI and then you can convert it to MPEG after editing.

 

[AUtiger]

if you just wanted to transfer, not clean up, couldn't you just used a dvd recorder and plug a tape deck or vhs directly into the dvd recorder? Thx