Saving found art

I’ll be gone most of the day, so I thought I’d leave a little more “natural” art.
First, another photograph of the purely natural art that’s been staring at me:
Heavenlyimage3.jpg
And here’s some rodent art, which was carefully preserved inside a pet hobbyist book.
RodentArt.jpg
Finally, some VHS tapes from the late 80s and early 90s.
VHSs.jpg
Most of them are unlabeled, and some have never been watched — which makes them like newly discovered time capsules. Some of them I’m really glad to have found — especially a bizarre 1991 interview of me during the construction of the nightclub I ran in those days, along with incredible footage of the artists at work painting the Neo-Impressionist paintings and building the gargoyles that adorned the interior. I’d share it, but it’s in analog format, and I don’t have the technology to convert it to DVD.
These tapes will not last forever, and they include lots of footage of people who are now dead which I recorded, so I’d like to save them. The problem is, there’s a ton of stuff for sale out there, and I don’t like reinventing the wheel. I was thinking of buying something which would convert VHS to DVD, and I’ve been looking at reasonably priced machines like this “Panasonic DMR-EZ47V Up-Converting 1080p DVD-Recorder/VCR Combo.” Unfortunately, I’m not up on the technology (I don’t know upconverting from downconverting, for example), and there are so many of these things with so many conflicting reviews that I don’t know what to buy.
Any readers who have advice based on experience, I’m all ears. Bear in mind that some of these tapes are in bad, bad shape, and I simply want something that will save them — in the best and hopefully simplest way possible.
If I wait too long, not only might the tapes bite the dust, but so will the VHS itself. (Once it goes the way of the Beta, it may be too late.)
For now, the best I can offer by way of “digital conversion” is the digital photograph of the analog tapes!


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7 responses to “Saving found art”

  1. Tom Avatar
    Tom

    I bought the Panasonic DMR-ES35V a year or two ago and have been slowly copying my extensive collection of VHS tapes to DVD. This machine has worked flawlessly, and I recommend it without hesitation. It will also copy from DVD to VHS, and will be play both. It handles all types of DVD discs (+ or -R, + or -RW, DVD-RAM). Can’t remember exactly what I paid for it at Best Buy, but probably somewhere in the $250-300 range. Surely will be less at Amazon.

  2. SDN Avatar
    SDN

    I’ve been using a DAK 2800-PC to convert cassette tapes to mp3. You might want to check out their web site.

  3. Adam Herman Avatar
    Adam Herman

    having had to convert a large collection myself, I’ve found that just about any VCR/DVD recorder combo will do the job.

  4. Eric Scheie Avatar

    Thanks all!
    The ES35V is no longer available new, and there are already complaints that its successors (ES37V and ES38V) are not as good. There always seem to be glitches with these things, and many of them relate to the software which is designed to shut down attempts to copy protected material.
    After days of researching this, I’m more confused than ever, as there are no units which don’t have negative reviews. However, I found some serious videophiles who recommend (to someone who complained) using a DVD recorder with a hard disk drive:
    http://forum.videohelp.com/topic349041.html
    Then I read this, and I started to get excited over the possibilities:
    http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=51795280b92fc49c6c606c1d4e6b6841&t=940657
    Damn but this stuff is complicated.
    At the heart seems to be a war between content consumers and content providers, which spills over into the design of whatever is available.
    Factor in HDTV, BlueRay, etc., and anything I buy will soon be obsolete, so I guess I’m sort of screwed no matter what I do!

  5. guy on internet Avatar
    guy on internet

    Don’t buy any dedicated machine. They all do suck.
    Almost all computers can burn DVDs, and there are simple interfaces you can attach to them to run any external video source into any editing program that can capture a raw stream.
    Hundred bucks or so for that box (at the Apple store, which is crazy expensive), couple hundred for a program like Final Cut Express (if you don’t already have one, but you probably do, and if you don’t, useful-enough free stand-ins are available), and you’re more than set — once you figure out how to work the editing program, which can be a pain if you’re not used to real-world film-editing conventions. But it’s probably less of a pain than disposing of a DVD/VCR thing once you’re done with it.
    While learning how to do something handy, you can edit the material more precisely than button-mashing allows, and you don’t have to rely on the possibly totally wrong pre-programmed image and compression settings you get in a dedicated box.
    Plus, you can keep the stuff: the still-useful box, the program, and full-resolution captures of your videos, awaiting their next format jump.

  6. Eric Scheie Avatar

    Thanks, goi! I’ve seen the Dazzle interface, but lots of videophiles complain that the quality you get is very poor, so it’s very confusing.

  7. Eric Scheie Avatar

    There’s also the ADS Tech DVD Xpress DX2 Video Converter, as well as the Pinnacle Movie Box but they’ve drawn bad reviews too.
    I hate checking these things out and finding bad reviews, and I’m beginning to think it’s impossible to find something which hasn’t generated bad reviews…
    If only there were some way to review the reviews.