CONVERT & RESTORE OLD VIDEOS
What you’ll need
Before you start converting old videotapes it’s worth taking stock of the equipment you already have. If you still own the camcorder you filmed your home movies on, and it has sockets for composite cables (the yellow, red and white TV cable inputs), then you’re already well on the way. Even better, you may have a DVD recorder, which makes the conversion process that much easier (check your DVD player’s manual for more information).
If you don’t have any of the above, then you’ll need equipment to play back your old tapes. If you want to convert videos you’ve taken yourself, you’ll need to buy a camcorder that can play the type of videotapes you have. To convert films or TV programmes on VHS videos that you bought you’ll need a video player. Just be sure that whatever equipment you buy has composite connections.
Next, you’ll need a USB video-capture device. We bought the August VGB100 (£20 from Amazon, www.snipca. com/25639 – see image below). This converts the video signal from your camera or video player and turns it into a format your computer can understand. Simply connect the yellow, red and white cables to your camcorder, the USB cable to your PC, then use the software that comes with the VGB100 to convert your videos (see mini workshop on page 52).
Converting video using a DVD recorder
While DVD recorders are the easiest way to convert your home movies, you might struggle to find one in stock at the likes of Currys and Argos. We did, however, track some down on ebay for as little as £26. Go to www.snipca.com/ 25640 to see what’s available. Tick the VCR box on the left of the search results to apply a filter that lets you see DVD recorders with a built-in VCR.
Once you have your DVD recorder, you need to connect the camcorder to it using the ‘Line in’ or ‘Decoder’ socket on the back (see image below). This could be a Scart socket, so you’ll have to connect the yellow, red, and white cables that came with your camera to a Scart adapter, then connect the other end of the cable to the AV port on your camcorder.
Make sure your DVD recorder is connected to your TV, then switch on the TV, DVD recorder and camcorder. Press play on your camcorder and you should see your home movie playing on your TV. If not, change your TV’S input source to the one used by your DVD recorder.
Once you see your camcorder video on your TV, put a blank disc into your DVD recorder and press the Record button. Once you’ve finished recording, press Stop on the DVD recorder. You should see a prompt to finalise the DVD (a process that makes it playable on other devices, including your PC). Once finalising has finished, place the DVD into the disc drive on your PC. You’ll be able to watch the video using a media-player program like VLC ( www.videolan.org), or copy the files to your PC’S hard drive using Handbrake ( https://handbrake.fr), so you can edit and restore the footage.
Restoring your videos
When you check your video footage (and its audio) you’ll probably see that it could do with improving and cleaning up. It might be too dark, too bright, too quiet, or too shaky. Thankfully, these problems can be tackled with free video-editing software. What you won’t be able to fix are blemishes within the footage itself (see image above). These glitches are usually down to tape damage, which is beyond the capabilities of affordable video-editing software.
There’s a wide range of expensive, professional-level video-editing packages available – Adobe Premiere Elements ( www.snipca.com/25732) and Pinnacle Studio ( www.pinnaclesys.com/en), for example. However, while both are packed with excellent features, they’re complicated to use and will slow your PC unless you have a top-of-the-range graphics card. Instead we suggest you use the free Videopad ( www.snipca. com/25651), which is easy to use and lets you convert videotapes so you can watch them on your PC (see mini workshop on page 52) and restore them.
Click the red download button at the top to get Videopad, then install the program. Assuming you didn’t record your video using Videopad, you’ll have to add it to the program. Once you’ve launched it, click Open (top left), navigate
to and select your video, then click Open. Your video will play in the Clip Preview box on the right.
Adjust brightness, contrast and colour
To change a video’s brightness levels, click the small down arrow to the right of the Video Effects button, then click ‘Color adjustments’ (see screenshot below). When the Effects window opens, move the sliders to adjust brightness and contrast. Alternatively, use the Select Preset dropdown menu to use Videopad’s recommended Bright and Dark settings. You’ll see the effects of any changes you apply to your video in the Preview window as you make them.
If your video’s colours are a little too garish, you should desaturate them. Click the arrow next to Video Effects again, then click Saturation. Move the slider or use the saturation pre-sets in the dropdown menu. Move the slider all the way to the left and your video will be converted to black and white.
Fix shaky videos
Camcorders in the 1980s and 1990s weren’t the compact items they are today. Hauling such unwieldy equipment around made it difficult to shoot footage that was completely stable. Thankfully, Videotab can help add stability to your footage. Click Video Effects, then the Stabilize Video button at the bottom of the dropdown menu. Select High Quality or Ultra Quality (the latter will make your video even smoother, but could take a couple of hours to process depending on the length of your video), then click OK. Once the process has completed, the original video will be renamed with the preface ‘Stabilized’. Click it, then click the Play button in the Clip Preview window to watch it.
Improve poor-quality audio
If your video’s audio is a little tinny or difficult to hear, why not give it a boost? Click Audio Effects, then Amplify. Move the ‘Gain (%)’ slider to the right to increase the volume. Be careful not to turn this up too much or your audio might become distorted. You can also fade your audio track in or out using the Select Preset dropdown menu.
Save your finished video
Once you’re happy with all the edits you’ve made to your video, you need to export it. To do that, right-click the thumbnail of your video on the left, then click ‘Place Clip on Sequence’. You’ll see that it’s been added to the bottom of Videopad’s window.
Next, click File, Export Video, then dismiss the trial-demo notification by clicking I Will Purchase Later. Click File, Video File, then Detect. The program will now choose the optimum settings for saving your video. The only thing to make sure is that the file format is MP4 (see screenshot opposite). Videopad selected this automatically every time we used it, but if it doesn’t, click the dropdown menu and select it. This ensures your video is encoded using a format that’s compatible with most devices. Finally, click Create to export your video.