The rival formats have fallen out of favour now because while they offer high quality, they don’t have the clever compression of H.264 and MPEG-4 so their files are very big. The two other common formats are Microsoft’s AVI/WMV and Apple’s MOV. That’s the format used by massive video sites such as YouTube and iTunes, and it delivers very high quality without taking up too much room (although video files in any format are still pretty large, so if you’re going to digitize a lot of video tapes make sure you have plenty of digital storage space!). For the vast majority of people, the best video file format for turning VHS video into digital video is MPEG-4 (MP4) using H.264 compression. That depends on what you want to do with the video. What is the best format to convert VHS to digital? If it has the same connectors as your VCR, great! If not, you may need an RCA cable that has the three RCAs at one end but a 3.5mm audio plug at the other. You’ll then need to plug those cables into your VHS converter. The two most common output connectors on the back of a VCR are S-Video, which is video only, and RCA, which has three plugs: one for video and two for audio. This depends on what ports you have on your VHS-to-digital converter. You’ll use this to play the VCR tapes that you want to digitize. For example, the listings on Amazon include “VHS to Digital Converter Adapter”, “Elgato Video Capture”, “Capture Card USB”, “Video Capture Card” and so on. Different manufacturers call them different things, but you’ll usually find the word “capture” or “converter” in the name.

There are lots of different options including internal ones that sit inside your PC and external ones that plug into your PC USB port. In this article we’ll discover the best way to record into your PC, how to digitize VHS tapes, what hardware and software you need to transfer video to your device and what VHS-to-PC software you should try on Windows 10. To turn VHS into digital you’ll need three things: a computer with video capture software a video capture device such as a TV tuner card, a video capture card or an external USB video capture device and a VHS player such as a VCR.

Usb video grabber software mac