Capture old VHS tapes to PC

[dsttexas]

It's well past time for me to capture and edit my old home VHS videos. The VHS camcorder has long since died so it is not available to use like a DV camcorder would be to feed the videos.
So that leaves me with my VHS player, with its yellow, white and red output ports. My PC has USB 2.0 and Firewire ports.

Based on Steve's suggestion in my recently purchased "Muvipix.com Guide to Prem Elements 11", I am about to order the Canopus ADVC 110 converter, and have a couple questions.

1. Is there any other recommended A to D converter device that is available for this? I'm not inclined to buy a used ADS Pyro.

2. Will PrEl 11 capture each clip separately like WinDV, or will each tape be all one avi file? On digital tapes I believe this is controlled by the clip time stamps, but on analogue it has to be by scene change recognition, right? I've had problems getting prior versions of PrEl to recognize my camcorders for importing, and they would not create separate files by time stamps, and so I always used WinDV. With VHS tapes this may be a mute point unless the ADVC converter does something unique or PrEl does based on scene recognition.

Thanks for any help. I've got many hundreds of hours of editing ahead of me on this project and want to get started on the right foot. Looking forward to the new features in Rel 11, vs my old Rel 7.

Don

[Steve Grisetti]

For consumers, there's no better digitizer than the Grass Valley Canopus ADVC, Don. Only the ADS Pyro comes close, in terms of bang for the buck. And, as you already know, it's been discontinued (though still available online).

Since your incoming video won't have any timecode on it after going through the digitizer, neither Premiere Elements nor WinDV will break it into scenes, the way they do miniDV footage. You'll have to do that manually, capturing your video in short segments.

[dsttexas]

Thanks Steve, I did just notice that there is an option in PrEl to split scenes "By Content", which causes Media Analyzer to kick in after capture to smart tag and trim scenes based on changing content. (p. 47) We'll see how well that works!

I need to really read through all of your book now to see what else I'm missing.

Don

[Steve Grisetti]

"I need to really read through all of your book now to see what else I'm missing."

A compliment if I've ever heard one. Thanks, Don!