1TB VHS Capacity?

[Guest]

I have TONS of old VHS tapes that I want to burn to DVD and keep on an HDD for backup, they are 6 hours each, I'm not sure what format they are or anything technical, Everything I recorded is Old Analog standard definition, about how many hours of footage could a 1TB HDD hold? Or if you know a number of VHS Tapes it would hold?

 

[kanewolf]

Ripping DVDs to MP4, is somewhere between 1/2 GB to 1GB / hour.

 

[fzabkar]

FWIW, here is the user manual for an LG RC689D "Digital & Analog DVD recorder/VCR player combi":

http://www.bigbrownbox.com.au/images/bbb/manuals/RC689D/19092013153627RC689D.pdf

The recordable time is specified as follows:

DVD (4.7GB): Approx. 1 hours (XP mode), 2 hours (SP mode), 4 hours (LP mode), 6 hours (EP mode), 14 hours (MLP mode)

DVD+R DL (8.5GB): Approx. 3 hours (XP mode), 3.8 hours (SP mode), 7.3 hours (LP mode), 9.1 hours (EP mode), 21 hours (MLP mode)

 

[kenrivers]

The answer, for hard drive storage, depends on the format in which you save (import) the VHS tapes as. For example the best quality might be an uncompressed AVI file but those tend to be large files and thus fewer tapes can be saved to the drive. MPEG2 is an option as well as WMV or DivX or better than those three is H.264. Of the last three the H.264 will use the least amount of space thus enabling you to store more tapes on the drive.

 

[Guest]

The answer, for hard drive storage, depends on the format in which you save (import) the VHS tapes as. For example the best quality might be an uncompressed AVI file but those tend to be large files and thus fewer tapes can be saved to the drive. MPEG2 is an option as well as WMV or DivX or better than those three is H.264. Of the last three the H.264 will use the least amount of space thus enabling you to store more tapes on the drive.

How many 6 hour tapes do you think I could save to the 1TB HDD in the highest quality? I would want to since VHS already has bad quality. Thanks

 

[giantbucket]

at best, your VHS tapes have around half of the resolution of a DVD (based simply on NTSC / VHS / SVHS standards). realistically, you can probably expect it to be 1/4th the resolution. so if an average DVD rip is 1G for a 90min flick, then expect VHS to be 250meg per 90min, or 1G per 6hr tape. so, 1000 tapes on a 1T drive, maybe? certainly more than 100 tapes, but less than 10,000 tapes. it's a ROM (rough order of magnitude), off the cuff type of figure.

if you want something more realistic, find a 640x480 @ 30fps video and that's your SVHS benchmark.

 

[kenrivers]

I will have to run a test on about 3 VHS tapes I have before I can give you an answer. On some samples clips that I have that were recorded via TV to computer and converted to .mp4 files it was roughly 132MB for a clip that is 1 minute 42 seconds in length and 3.56GB for a 46 minute clip. However the comparison won't be the same. I really won't know until I am able to test it and even then I'm sure it won't be a fair comparison as the tapes I have are generally under or just slightly above two hours. Ii do have an old VHS camcorder that I can try to run for 6 hours so I can give you a more approximate answer.

 

[MrFixitHeavy]

Capture at Half DVD res and then try a two step process if quality is really a thing for you.

1. Capture as uncompressed AVI
2. Then fool around with compressing the AVI with various codecs etc. and testing them for quality against the original.

Though to be fair at 6 hours a piece those VHS tapes were reco5rded at SLP more than likely which means you've already given up on a lot of quality. So At this point I wouldn'ty fret about it.