Jane digitises her VHS Countdown debut
Jane Hoskyn takes three from the top as she works out how to…
Sshh. I’m typing this as quietly as I can, which is not very quietly, because I’m one of those 1970s self-taught typists who still punches the keys violently with her index fingers while scowling at the keyboard. So you can probably hear me hammering away in the background of this fortnight’s tech achievement: a digitally resurrected Countdown episode that featured me alongside the dream team of Whiteley, Vorderman, Dent and Stilgoe - plus the scoundrel who beat me in a crucial conundrum (see screenshot below).
That episode, broadcast in March 2005, never made it on to the internet. It’s mentioned on The Countdown Wiki ( http://wiki.apterous.org/episode_3885), but the only known recording is a VHS tape on my dad’s bookshelves. And for the benefit of this very column, I am now digitising it. Sort of.
I’ll be honest, I thought this task would be easy. I digitise photo negatives all the time, so surely digitising VHS follows a similar principle: read the analogue source (negative, tape, whatever) and then export it as a digital file ( JPG, MP4, whatever). All I had to do was connect a VCR to a TV, then the TV to my laptop, and then record the laptop’s screen using a free screen-capture program such as Sharex ( https://getsharex.com). Right?
I got off to a flying start by digging up a tech fossil from the gadget graveyard – aka my loft: a VCR-TV combination. It looks like a tiny portable telly and weighs more than a fridge. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have an HDMI port like my laptop and smart TV – it has a SCART port.
But again, I knew what to do. I forked out 15 quid for an adapter to connect a SCART cable from the VCR-TV with an HDMI cable that plugged into my laptop, thereby transmitting the signal and allowing the magic to happen.
Sadly, when I connected my cables, there was no magic of any kind. The VCR-TV was playing my Countdown video, but nothing on my laptop - not even VLC ( www.videolan.org/vlc), the superb open-source program that can play/record/convert any video, could read the video input signal, or even acknowledge its existence (see main screenshot).
It transpires that VHS analogue signals need a bigger boat, in the shape of Vhs-conversion software that converts the signal and turns your PC’S DVD drive into a DVD recorder. Leaving aside the fact that my laptop’s DVD drive doesn’t even work, this software doesn’t come cheap (for example, VIDBOX Video Conversion Suite costs £117.77, when it’s in stock: www.snipca.com/28909).
Reader, I fudged it. I fashioned a smartphone tripod out of the SCARTHDMI adapter’s box (useful for something at least), then pointed my phone’s video-camera app at the VCR-TV’S screen and pressed record while Countdown was playing. Then I crept away as quietly as I could. My budget smartphone can only record short chunks before busting a gut, so I had to splice several clips together before uploading the perishing thing to the Daily Motion website ( www.snipca. com/28956).
It’s about the worst attempt at digitising you’ve ever seen. Never mind. I’ll always be the highest-scoring loser of 2005.
I fashioned a smartphone tripod out of the SCART-HDMI adapter’s box, then pointed it at the screen and pressed record