I have a good working Panasonic AG-7650HP S-VHS Hi-Fi Player with S-VHS output and the Faroudja circuitry cleans up old tapes decently. I also have, but have not yet tried using an Extron IN1502 S-Video to VGA video scaler to see if that helps or not. I question feeding my signal into a $20 converter to get to digital. Suggestions? I have several hundred tapes to process. I have a separate monitor output, so that is not an issue.
USB-C would be preferable. I can re-sync the audio in software if path delays are an issue.
In case it makes a difference to anyone, the several hundred I want to digitize are the select few I expect will be worth digitizing out of a total collection of a couple thousand locally recorded tapes. The total quantity of commercially produced tapes in the larger group is probably under a dozen and of no interest, thus copy protection or a need to defeat it is not an issue at all. 99% I recorded myself. Largest category groups are family and church services where I did the A/V work for years.
We do have several options that might work for you. First we have our USB3HDCAP: USB 3.0 Video Capture Device - HDMI/DVI - Video Converters | | StarTech.com. This will support either S-video or Composite video signals and can be used with the free capture software we offer Streamcatcher Pro which is available for download in the Drivers & Downloads section of the product page linked above. This can also be used with other 3rd party DisrectShow compatible capture software.
One thing to note is that these video capture products are only compatible with the Windows operating system versions listed on their respective product pages and not compatible with MacOS or Linux.
If you have any further questions on this, please do feel free to reply and we will be more than happy to help. You can also feel free to reach out to one of our Technical Advisors directly via the Live Chat option which can be found on our website.
For the moment I am putting the Extron scaler on the shelf and focusing my efforts on integrating and evaluating the StarTech USB3HDCAP I recently purchased.
I have just returned from vacation, and it may be a bit before I get my bench set up for this work, but when I get some meaningful results, I will report back. Unfortunately, this kind of VCAP work only happens in real time and after lots of pre-roll and tweaking is finished as well and because a finished product will be a second and separate step, my comments on the finished result may take a while. My comments on the USB3HDCAP will be forthcoming much sooner.