record directly to a hard drive from vhs deck or camcorder ?

I'm looking for a way to record video directly from my camcorder and my vhs
deck to an external hard drive... I know Sony makes a dvd recorder that can
do this but then you're limited in too many ways.

 

You can use a WinTV capture card, to capture a composite signal.
A card like this fits in a computer, and the computer does the
recording.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815116028

If you don't like the computer solution, then the next solution
might be a DVR. They make DVRs based on hard drives, so a device
like this has its own hard drive internally. They're typically
used on security systems. The only advantage of this, compared
to a computer, is it is slightly smaller and dedicated to the
task of recording.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16881104019

They also make portable DVR devices, like this one. This one has
a 30GB drive inside.

http://www.supercircuits.com/Digital-Video-Recorders/Micro-DVRs/MDVR16

Paul

 

The source would be from several camcorders: a Sears VHS that
used the big vhs tapes you played in a vcr attached to a tv set...

Those old Sears units were made for them by RCA and you could
shoot up to 3 hours.. some of those tapes recorded to were 160
and 180 minutes native, not extended play or SuperLongPlay.

Used it for wildlife, mostly black bears that would come down to
the creek and fish for suckers when they were spawning in the spring...

The other footage is from Sony camcorders that shot digital, both
hi8 and miniDV using 90 minute tapes.

So you can see that capturing to dvd, even dvd/dl, wouldn't give you
enough storage and it would also be in vob/mpg2 which isn't a good
place to wind up... I've got several hundred hours of this kind of footage.

A DRV/PVR unit that would accept feeds from both my old VCR playback
decks and straight from the firewire out port on the Sony camcorders would
be ideal

The idea is to get all the footage onto a hard drive in avi format for
ease of editing...

Thanks a lot for your suggestions - gets me pointed in a good direction.

 

WHY? Thousands of us do this every day with a computer, but if
you are asking for a standalone solution (which doesn't require any
computer) then you are venturing into an area with not many choices
and big price tags. Is that really what you want?

You would be better off buying annother/new computer than trying
to find a standalone solution.

 

you're almost certainly correct ... but every once in a while there turns
out
to be someone lurking around the newsgroup who has either come across
or has invented a great solution and if I never pose the question I'd never
find it out... guess I might try to grab an old p4 3gigahertz with lots of
RAM and
open pci slots and fat hard drives and get busy ... any ideas on used
capture
cards ?

 

GREAT !! A good use for the old Sony handycams to use 'em to patch
from the VCR's into the firewire card...

Not going to go with RAID but everything else looks straightforward...
Already spotted a couple of older core2's with XP Pro and your sources
for the drives looks fine and I think I can cut a hole in the computer case
to add a socket for external SATA connection... Looks like by the end
of next week I'll have all the hardware. and Avidemux
http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/ ought to be able to handle the editing.

Thank you very much - saved me lots of time and fretting !!

 

No need to cut a hole in the case. Just by an esata pci (or pic express card for about $15.
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132007

Tony