How to Transfer VHS Videos onto your Computer

The footage may not seem much to anyone else, but for my family it's a priceless glimpse into the past.

It represents the beginning of a whole tape full of old home videos. The lady in the green coat is my grandmother and she's no longer with us.

That's the value of family films that are 20-50 years old. That's why you'll want to keep them for future generations too. These are memories and little pockets of history.

The trouble is that anything before the 21st century is likely to be stashed on old VHS videos. I know because I've got drawers full of the things. Most are movies or things recorded off the television. But some are genuinely irreplaceable, like the segment shown above.

There are hundreds of companies willing to take copious sums of money off you to transfer VHS onto disk or your PC. You don't need them. In fact, you'd be amazed at how easy it is to copy analog into a digital format yourself.

I know, because I've just done it.

A quick look at your VHS player will tell you how it hooks up to the world. If you're really lucky, then it'll have a single, high quality plug, which fits nicely onto your adapter leads, or else a row of colored male sockets.

But who is ever that lucky?

The majority of us will have to beg, borrow, buy or otherwise acquire the appropriate connection cable. This is going to fully depend upon your own VCR, so I can't direct you completely here. (Though if you're totally stuck, leave a comment with the name of your VHS player and I'll let you know what you need to connect it up.)

The likelihood is that it'll be one of the two below.

Like I said, my VCR player only had a scart lead socket. I bought the second of these two cables. The scart went into the back of the VCR. The male RCA cables linked up with the female sockets on the adapter. I was all set to go!

The double ended RCA male socket would work in the same way.  Just match all of the colors up and that's it for the hardware side of things.

All the adapters that I've seen come complete with the drivers and other programs needed to use them. If not then you'll have to purchase that separately.

Install everything, then you're ready to party. Simply press 'play' on your VCR and the footage on those old VHS videos will be right there on your computer monitor.

Each video editing software is different, but typically you'll have a 'record' button to press. That will capture the images coming from your analog source (the VHS player), then prompt you to save it afterwards.

Many also come with a sliding scale of features - depending upon the quality - which allow you to edit the footage; cut it; add music; add commentary; put in a gif of a squacking duck, if you so fancy; whatever in fact you want to do with it.

From there you can merely leave it saved to your PC, copy it onto a DVD, post it to YouTube, upload it onto a cloud, or otherwise embed it into any digital media format.

And those faded old memories, almost lost to changing times and dusty VHS, will live again in the cyber age.

(Incidentally, the baby is now a foot taller than me. Two decades on, he's suffering the indignity of recovered home movies of his first birthday being shown to his girlfriend and the entire of Wizzley.)