I mentioned OBS in a previous blog, as a great free option for capturing video. I'll have add a caveat. It's great, when it works. When it as working, it was perfect. The first time I ever used it, it felt like a godsend. Now, I have another videotape to capture. Booted OBS, it still captures video great, but no audio. I hadn't changed anything about it. Settings were still the same, hardware still the same. I'm using AV2HDMI, by the way. Sneered at by professional VHS restorers, but they consider a minimal set-up investment to start at $1,000, and freely recommend much more expensive equipment if you're serious.
Those guys are exactly that - professionals who make a living salvaging old videos at the best quality humanly available. I had to wait weeks to afford the $35 I needed for the AV2HDMI unit plus an HDMI to USB cable. Would love to have the pro stuff. I used to do weddings/industrial video production, so once upon a time I had most of the gear they mention but that was decades ago. Back in the first great days of video production using an Amiga 4000 and NewTek's Video Toaster. Revolutionary days back then.
Back to modern times...after several days of research, studying, trying to learn, following multiple guides and suggestions, it started looking like it wasn't a hardware issue, but a compatibility issue. OBS's main strength is as streaming software. Seems like video capture is kind of a side effect, and doesn't work equally for everybody.
Given the number of other people online making the same complaint about OBS - no audio - and the lack of any consistently successful solutions, I had to give up. I did try Virtualdub, but really had my doubts. While the software will run in Windows 10, it's specs list Windows 98, ME, NT4, 2000, XP, Vista, and 7. While that's a huge spectrum of continued support, it's age and lack of mentioning Windows 10 put me off. Gave it a try, the quality was fair, but most disappointingly the only output format was AVI. Some modern media players don't even recognize AVI, others struggle to play the audio in an AVI. For the record, 5kplayer was great at playing AVI files.
The biggest problem with AVI was that I could only record a few minutes and then it auto-stops. Some very minimal searching on google, and I found that AVI files were originally limited to 2GB, and using some tricks with pointers, can go to 4GB. I'm not certain that's the problem here, but it's a limitation that MP4 doesn't have, so that disqualified VirtualDub for me.
There were a few paid options, but I didn't look into them. I've already invested my limit. :^)
Then I remembered that VLC Media Player has a rather obscure video capture system. It didn't work for my previous capture card, so I'd forgotten about it until yesterday. Didn't even have to update, it was immediately compatible with AV2HDMI. There were still some bumps in the road, but at least it worked with the hardware, and grabbed clean video.
First problem? Defaults to AVI. The initial guides I found all lead to saving the file on the default format. Plus, the guides were a bit outdated, so I had to blunder around blindly on the parts that weren't accurate any more.
Eventually, I found this page - How to record screen with VLC
If you want to see the process that worked for me, it's on my next post - step by step images, and an example of the video: VLC Media Player Transfer to VHS
The article offered instructions for multiple techniques. The most useful part for me was the section on recording a video. You have to read between the lines a little. But following the steps, the article got me exactly where I needed to be.
The best part, when you get to "Convert/Save", and the option to create the file name, you can choose MP4 format simply by TYPING .MP4 AT THE END OF YOUR FILENAME!! That seems too little, too simple, it feels like there should be a button to select or a preference somewhere. VLC actually offers a lot of format options to save in, and it's very simple once you know how to get to it.
I just did a test video, running for over an hour, and the quality was great, the audio was perfect, and it recorded the entire hour-plus. Finally, a reliable way to get video from VHS tape to my computer!!
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