VLC Media Player for Transferring VHS to MP4

 

    I mentioned OBS in a previous blog, as a great free option for capturing video.  I'll have add a caveat.  It's great, when it works.  When it as working, it was perfect.  The first time I ever used it, it felt like a godsend.  Now, I have another videotape to capture.  Booted OBS, it still captures video great, but no audio.  I hadn't changed anything about it.  Settings were still the same, hardware still the same.  I'm using AV2HDMI, by the way.  Sneered at by professional VHS restorers, but they consider a minimal set-up investment to start at $1,000, and freely recommend much more expensive equipment if you're serious.

    Those guys are exactly that - professionals who make a living salvaging old videos at the best quality humanly available.  I had to wait weeks to afford the $35 I needed for the AV2HDMI unit plus an HDMI to USB cable.  Would love to have the pro stuff.  I used to do weddings/industrial video production, so once upon a time I had most of the gear they mention but that was decades ago. Back in the first great days of video production using an Amiga 4000 and NewTek's Video Toaster.  Revolutionary days back then.

    Back to modern times...after several days of research, studying, trying to learn, following multiple guides and suggestions, it started looking like it wasn't a hardware issue, but a compatibility issue.  OBS's main strength is as streaming software.  Seems like video capture is kind of a side effect, and doesn't work equally for everybody.

    Given the number of other people online making the same complaint about OBS - no audio - and the lack of any consistently successful solutions, I had to give up.  I did try Virtualdub, but really had my doubts.  While the software will run in Windows 10, it's specs list Windows 98, ME, NT4, 2000, XP, Vista, and 7.  While that's a huge spectrum of continued support, it's age and lack of mentioning Windows 10 put me off.  Gave it a try, the quality was fair, but most disappointingly the only output format was AVI.  Some modern media players don't even recognize AVI, others struggle to play the audio in an AVI.  For the record, 5kplayer was great at playing AVI files. 

    The biggest problem with AVI was that I could only record a few minutes and then it auto-stops.  Some very minimal searching on google, and I found that AVI files were originally limited to 2GB, and using some tricks with pointers, can go to 4GB.  I'm not certain that's the problem here, but it's a limitation that MP4 doesn't have, so that disqualified VirtualDub for me.

    There were a few paid options, but I didn't look into them.  I've already invested my limit.  :^)
Then I remembered that VLC Media Player has a rather obscure video capture system.  It didn't work for my previous capture card, so I'd forgotten about it until yesterday.  Didn't even have to update, it was immediately compatible with AV2HDMI.  There were still some bumps in the road, but at least it worked with the hardware, and grabbed clean video.

    First problem?  Defaults to AVI.  The initial guides I found all lead to saving the file on the default format.  Plus, the guides were a bit outdated, so I had to blunder around blindly on the parts that weren't accurate any more.

Eventually, I found this page - How to record screen with VLC 
If you want to see the process that worked for me, it's on my next post - step by step images, and an example of the video:  VLC Media Player Transfer to VHS

The article offered instructions for multiple techniques.  The most useful part for me was the section on recording a video.  You have to read between the lines a little.  But following the steps, the article got me exactly where I needed to be. 

    The best part, when you get to "Convert/Save", and the option to create the file name, you can choose MP4 format simply by TYPING .MP4 AT THE END OF YOUR FILENAME!!  That seems too little, too simple, it feels like there should be a button to select or a preference somewhere.  VLC actually offers a lot of format options to save in, and it's slightly easier once you know how to get to it.

I just did a test video, running for over an hour, and the quality was great, the audio was perfect, and it recorded the entire hour-plus.  Finally, a reliable way to get video from VHS tape to my computer!!

Another Minor Update - New Blog and Another Cookie Consent Struggle

     It's been a while since the last post; that's getting to be a bad habit.  Lots of little things all up in the air at once.  Plus some annoying hurdles to get past.  I did finally resolve the cookie consent issue for the upcoming eBay Ephemera-focused blog.  I've been using CookieYes for Grace Notes, but they only let you have one free site.  If I wasn't on such a limited budget, I'd have been happy to sign up for the cheapest available paid service they offer.  It's only $10 per month, and allows up to 600 pages per scan.  Not sure if that's 600 "unique URL" sites, or literally 600 pages in total scanned.  Either way, the cost was very reasonable.  It's my income/living expenses that aren't reasonable.  Currently I'm on the Google Office plan of $12 per month, plus $12 per year for the custom URL.  Unless Monique and I can improve our finances significantly, I'm not willing to spend more on what amounts to a hobby.

    Instead of upping my game with CookieYes, I found another cookie consent site called "Osano".  Like CookieYes, Osano has a "first one is free" policy.  With restrictions.  And difficulties.  For some reason, this one was harder to get working.  Then I had a hard time confirming it was actually functional.  Finally ran into CookieBot.  Their site has an app that checks your site for cookie consent compliance.  They confirmed "Not Working" at first, and after some effort, I finally received positive confirmation.  

    So, after far too much effort, the Ephemera blog is ready to begin.  There's still a ton of set-up, design, and of course, actual blog posts to write... but it's ready to start now.  You can check out my progress here:  eBay Ephemera: A Page Out Of Time.  Still working on the next gospel song.  Haven't been as focused as I should be, so it's going slow.  Finished a personal project today, that should free me up to work more on the blogs now.  Hopefully that will include enough practice time to get that next song ready.

    Went to visit my folks yesterday.  Aside from spending a great day together, Mom decided to go through her old 'home video' collection.  We found three tapes that seemed like good potential.  They're on my desk in front of me at the moment.  Will get them transferred to computer, then fast-scan through the videos to see what's on them.  With luck, there might be some footage of my uncle playing piano.  Not quite so important, but one of them might have some footage from the early 90's of me playing.  I'm curious to see how my playing has changed over the years, but also hope to see one of my favorite pianos.  Back in the Missouri days, my final year or so in the Air Force, I had a vintage upright piano.  Not the best condition, but most of the keys worked.  The piano itself was stained a faded green.  Can't remember who made it.  Like any old beat-up upright, it had a strong honky-tonk sound, and was a lot of fun to play.  When I moved, it was too big to take, so passed it along to another family.  Fingers crossed, I'd be very pleased if that piano was on one of these videos.  I'd love to hear it again.

Google Blogger Housecleaning: Customizing Blogger

    Writing kind of a trivial post today.  At least, it's trivial in the large scheme of things.  It was a big deal for me, anyway.  :^)

    Back in January when the idea of starting Grace Notes back up was gaining momentum, there was a huge speed bump that just about shut things down before it even had a chance to start.  The "cookie consent" situation.  There were a log of changes to manage, new things to learn.  Last time I was paying (a lot!) for hosting and using Wordpress.  This time we're taking the budget express.  Google Blogger is free, and you can have a BUNCH of blogs if you really want to.  Google charges $12 per year for the URL domain, and $12 for Google Office.

    The URL name is a compromise.  It's not the original one for Grace Notes, but it is my overarching URL ever since Galaxy Quest came out.  Crewman6 was the redshirt who lived, and it's always been an inspirational name for me.  Google Office gives me a custom email, more storage for whatever files I use on the blog.  Some other benefits I haven't looked into yet.  Pretty much, this is everything I need to manage Grace Notes.  WordPress was a great blogging platform, and was more versatile than Blogger.  But it was a heck of a lot more expensive to maintain, and the hosting company just kept leapfrogging the rates up every year.  As things stand, I pay about $156 per year for this setup.  The old Grace Notes, with Word Press, hosted on a proper site... was costing nearly $500 per year by the time I pulled the plug.  Blogger is far more cost-efficient for me.

    At some point I'll turn Adsense on, but it's not a big goal here.  Grace Notes cost much more to maintain than it ever made me last time around.  If it can pay the $12 per month fee this time, I'll call it a successful hobby and enjoy it.

    Now we get to today's subject.  To properly manage the cookie consent requirements, I had to paste some code into the Blogger theme.  I also pasted in some custom lines for a couple of features that weren't easily available on Blogger.  Not really a skill of mine, but I did manage to follow a couple of guides.  Afterward, the initial menus for Theme management were gone.  There was a comment about some features not being available now.  I took that to mean I could no longer change the advanced features of my theme, without reloading the base version, making my changes, then re-inserting whatever custom codes needed to be done manually.  For a few months I looked for other theme templates off-Blogger, but didn't find any that seemed worth changing the whole blog for.

     With that in mind, I've been leaving a lot of 'tidying up' undone for months.  Mainly the link colors, and making a custom Banner. Woke up this morning, and it felt like today was the day to finally fix all that.  Found some websites that gave pointers on changing the link colors and sat down to puzzle them out.  The first one wanted me to start off on the Theme tab.  As usual, the first line read "Theme Preview is currently unavailable."

   

    If you're familiar with Blogger, at this point you've probably realized I've been mistaken this whole time.  The ability to customize my theme was always there.  As was the Advanced options.  Maybe something changed, maybe I just read it wrong.  I was clicking the down-arrow on the orange button to get the drop-down menu.  Took me ages to realize I just had to click on the orange button ON THE WORD "Customize!!" in order to get to the customization options. Now that I know, fixing the link colors was very easy.  

    It was a bit of work to get the banner done, but at least it was legitimate work, not a figment of my own imagination.  My previous keyboard was a Yamaha DG-640, and was a grayish-silver color.  That worked really well against the black background of the blog screen.  The Hammer 88 was more difficult.  A black body on a black background doesn't stand out a lot.  I played with it, even tried to use an external image for the background, but it didn't come out perfect.  It will stand for now, I do like it a lot.  But some day in the future, I'd like to have better lighting so the keys will be a clean white. Today's lighting was partly sunlight from a window, partly incandescent bulbs from a ceiling fan light, and the keys aren't consistently white.

    It's been a learning process, and a matter of finding the right software all over the internet.  I started with PixLR, used Irfanview, and tried several online tools before getting something that worked.  At the moment, I'm calling it a day, and an improved banner will have to be a project for another day.