[Help] Best video capture dongle for VHS to Mac

[Stamper]

Hi guys,

I have a bunch of tapes I would like to digitize on the mac and share.

I have a pristine VCR, all I need it seems is a video capture dongle (rca or other to USB)

Anyone could advise me on what to buy?

THX

[williarob]

Hauppauge makes some good ones:

http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/products/prods.htm

I have the 950Q (now updated to the 955Q) which I used to capture a bunch of laserdiscs, (and more recently some betamax tapes) before I bought the Osprey PCIe internal card.

I also have the HD PVR2.

The 950Q/955Q can be used with Virtualdub to capture lossless audio and video, while the HDPVR2 cannot. That uses Hardware encoding, to h264 with AAC Audio. Quality is very good, but not lossless, if that's important. Also, if you want to capture composite or S-Video with the PVR2, you have to order an additional cable from Hauppauge (it costs about $11).

There are plenty of other brands out there, e.g. by Elgato that I've heard good things about, but I've never tried them myself, so I can't vouch for them personally.

Edit: Whoops. Sorry, I think these are Windows Only...

[Stamper]

LOL, yeah, I need the best one for mac

[williarob]

Actually, I have been using the 950Q with my Macbook pro to do the betamax captures... But I'm running Bootcamp to do that - booting straight into Windows 7 Pro instead of OSX.

[crissrudd4554]

EyeTV Hybrid is what I usually use for Mac. Basically a Mac version of WinTV (Hauppauge).

[Stamper]

Both of those look good for TV recordings.

Is there one that can capture VHS via both s-video output and audio analog?

[crissrudd4554]

Both of those look good for TV recordings.

Is there one that can capture VHS via both s-video output and audio analog?

Most if not all the Elgato products I have tested have been able to do both including EyeTV Hybrid.

[Stamper]

So reviving this thread. It appears there is not a high quality solution for the SECAM format.

The Elgato dongle is low res 640x480 (not even SECAM quality) with aac.

However, Pal & NTSC content indeed have a choices of boxes for high quality captures.