Everything You Need to Convert Your VHS Tapes to Digital

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Lots of people have stacks of old VHS tapes they want to convert to digital. The process is less overwhelming than you might expect. You just need your VHS tapes, a VCR, a computer, and a capture card.

Why Convert Your Tapes to Digital?

People convert their VHS tapes to digital for different reasons. Maybe you want to save some old family movies, or you hate the new Star Wars digital remasters. Either way, VHS tapes degrade over time, so the best time to convert your tapes to digital is right now.

But that seems a little overwhelming, right? Don’t you need some expensive hardware or a giant nerd brain to convert tapes to digital?

No, not really. You just need some tapes, a VCR, and a capture card. Once you’ve got everything together, tape conversion is a breeze. And it shouldn’t cost you much more than $30 to complete this project ($15 if you already own a working VCR).

Some companies, like Kodak, will convert your VHS tapes to digital for you, but they charge about $30 per tape. That option isn’t really worth it unless you only want to convert one tape to digital.

Preparing Your VCR

An Omnivision VCR.

You need a working VCR to convert tapes to digital files. For many people, this is the hardest part of the process. It’s not difficult to find a working VCR; it’s just a bit time consuming (you’ll have to buy one secondhand).

Here’s the best way to buy a VCR and set it up for tape conversion:

Find a VCR and buy it: Goodwill is probably your best (and cheapest) bet. You could also ask to borrow a friend’s VCR or spend a little extra to buy one from Craigslist or eBay (watch out for those shipping fees).
Test the VCR: Once you’ve got a VCR, test it on a tape that you don’t care about—even if it was tested by someone else. Accidents happen, and you don’t want to risk losing your valuable footage.
Clean the VCR: Once you know the VCR is working, you’ll want to clean it. The 25 years of dust that’s accumulated on its tape heads can ruin the picture. To do this, run a cheap tape head cleaner through the VCR once or twice.

If you happen to buy a VCR that doesn’t work, don’t bother trying to fix it (unless you know how). Instead, see if you can return it and buy a new one.