VHS is a really bad format, always was.

You'll always just have to 'make do' when transferring VHS to digital.

Yeah the inherent noise and softness from most VHS sources is going to make a digital copy look kinda crappy. Your best bet is to make sure your audio is a good as possible and roll with it until you can track down a better copy.

Yeah, "I" would prob just stick with looking for newer digital copies of what you already have. But notice the emphasis on "I" - cause that's what I would do. Happy converting and let us know how it goes

Maybe I'll get around to gettin an example
on YouTube so you guys can see what I'm
Talkin about

I uploaded to youtube a vhs tape that i ripped so you can see what I'm working with and
whether or not this stuff is even usable.. Please if you have a chance check it out
and give me some tips constuctive criticism.... Even if it means tellin me I'm wastin my
time ripping all these and just join a service! Thanks for the responses so far.
Here's the link youtu.be

That's not bad quality for a direct VHS rip at all. However, although it seems like you are dropping cash on stuff, there are pools with a lot of these videos already. They came off better masters (be it 3/4", Betacam, etc) and they usually redo the audio so it sounds good in the club.

It's a matter of balance, how much do you value your time and are you willing to drop 1.99-$5 for a video for a KEY video you want that is already taken care of.

Thanks for checking the video. I'm just debating
the pros and cons of joining a pool (monthly
costs) I don't dj out anymore just got video sl
as a gift and just want to post short video
mixes online. Not sure if joining a pool is
right for me at this time.

well get to editing then,...vegas/final cut/ premiere all great editing programs....I mean you did a good job of ripping that video(not saying the quality is great but for vhs rip it is) why not start editing

The thing that's on yr side with converting VHS now is that good gear has been dumped by everybody & is super cheap.

A really nice VHS deck with freshly cleaned heads will help (get the cleaning kit w/swabs & alcohol). If you're playing old tapes they leave little bits of themselves behind on the heads.

Another thing you can score for nothing that used to be thousands is a time base corrector, basically a signal smoother and quality control. It will let you tweak saturation, brightness, tint, etc on your way into the capture. As an added bonus, it also knocks out the old Macrovision copy protection.

And now that everyone wants HD hardware, you can get proper pro SD capture cards for next to nothing too. Get a card made by Blackmagic or someone like that and capture right to uncompressed 8-bit SD. Those files are huge, so once it's in then clean up the file w/color correction/sharpening/deinterlacing and then get it to a smaller file format for permanent storage like ProRes.

If you have 1st-generation VHS and you're careful you can get close to 3/4" tape quality, and that's what a lot of 80s/early 90s video masters survived on.

Thanks for the advice! Trying to work on editing
My vids a lil better. Need some head cleaner also.
Gonna probably wait for a new capture
Card(need to upgrade my CPU)