VuPoint and the Art of Digitizing Old VHS Tapes

I’ve been playing with the VuPoint ST100B Digital Video Converter for several days now, and so far I’m pleased with my impulse purchase. Digitizing old analog media is more an art than a science, but one that at least has gotten easier over the years.

Set-up with the VuPoint converter is quick and painless. It comes packaged with cords to plug into your TV and VHS player, and once you insert an SD card, hit power, and switch over to the right TV input, you’re good to go for recording. Your choices at this point are limited, but in this case, that’s a good thing. There are only four buttons on the VuPoint box – Power, Record, Play, and Next. Hit Record once to start recording, and again to stop. To enter playback mode, hit the Play button once, and then press it again to view your latest recording. If you have multiple videos recorded, use  the Next button to cycle through your library.

And that’s it.

The one major downside to the VuPoint converter is that it encodes files in ASF format. That’s good for PC playback, but not much else. Luckily there are a number of free transcoding tools available to help you turn an ASF file into an MP4. I landed on Any Video Converter for this job after discovering that Handbrake wouldn’t work on my low-res netbook. The software worked handily until I learned that the free version apparently won’t work with video clips that run over an hour in length. Solution? Switch to a different computer in the house and back to Handbrake.

I never used the software CD that came with the VuPoint box, preferring to handle the video files on my own instead of dealing with someone else’s interface and management tools. The manual tells you the software on the CD is required to view your videos. It’s not.

Regarding quality, what can I say? Old VHS tapes are pretty low-quality to begin with. The MP4 files I ended up with are a little softer/smudgier than the ASF versions, but not by a lot. And given that we’re not talking high-def here anyway, the slight degradation from double transcoding doesn’t bother me. I never expected my old home movies to come out looking like Blu-ray. And frankly, the softness adds a touch of nostalgia, even if it doesn’t do enough to hide the ridiculous haircut I sported in the 1980s.

Bottom line: the VuPoint converter is a good buy if you’re looking for an easy way to digitize old tapes. Expect some extra work if you want to make your digital files play somewhere other than on a PC, and don’t expect HD quality results when you’re starting out with old analog recordings. Buyer’s Note: I snagged the VuPoint for $30 in a Just Deals deal, but I’ve seen the product listed several other places for only $20 or so more. Don’t go with the retail sites that try to sell it for $99. There are cheaper options.

7 thoughts on “VuPoint and the Art of Digitizing Old VHS Tapes”

  1. “And given that we’re not talking high-def here anyway, the slight degradation from double transcoding doesn’t bother me.”

    If you are happy, then you are happy.

    But FWIW, the worse the source material, the more hurtful multiple transcodes really are. If you are starting with pristine source material, you can mangle it quite a bit with little real world harm. But if you if you are starting with already degraded source material, every successive encode makes thinks exponentially worse.

    Noise truly expands in an exponential manner.

    Now that we’ve cleared up the theory aspect of things, please return to being happy with your product in practice…

  2. Chucky- as you say, the only worthwhile evaluation is one’s own perception of how the video looks. I was using HD as a reference point only as a way of stating that my expectations weren’t very high to begin with, not to suggest that HD source material wouldn’t hold up better to multiple transcodes.

    One thing I will note, though- this experience has me thinking more about the quality of the source material I record today. The better it is now, the better it will look when my kid has to transcode it to some new format in 30 years. :)

  3. Yeah, I’m bummed… my 20 year old high school wrestling videos are sooo bad. I have one more tape that I haven’t checked. Maybe it held up better than the one we digitized a few months back.

  4. “this experience has me thinking more about the quality of the source material I record today. The better it is now, the better it will look when my kid has to transcode it to some new format in 30 years.”

    If you’re thinking 30 years, worry about readability, not PQ.

    Worry about file formats, media durability, and ease of backup.

    If you’re thinking about 30 years, ironically enough, VHS actually ain’t a bad option. I know I’ll be able to find a VHS player in 30 years…

  5. “Chucky- as you say, the only worthwhile evaluation is one’s own perception of how the video looks. I was using HD as a reference point only as a way of stating that my expectations weren’t very high to begin with, not to suggest that HD source material wouldn’t hold up better to multiple transcodes.”

    I do follow you. My only point is this:

    If I were doing a workflow with good quality source material, I’d be less worried about doing a second encode than I would if I were doing a workflow with poor quality source material.

    In other words, if I were doing a workflow with old VHS tapes that I valued, I’d really try to avoid something that involved a second encode, precisely because my expectations for the source material’s quality weren’t very high to begin with. That’s where the thing about noise expanding exponentially comes into play. The second encode is more noticeable with poor quality source material.

  6. “my 20 year old high school wrestling videos are sooo bad”

    What kind of wrestler joins the A/V club? You, sir, are a walking contradiction.

Comments are closed.