Capturing VHS Video

In this tutorial you can follow the step by step procedure for capturing videos from video tape (VHS) to your hard drive.

To set up a capture device for digital and analog video, a recording card that meets the requirements of the manufacturer must be installed or must be already integrated in the PC at the factory.

You need a lot of free space on your hard drive to capture a video. Make sure that there is enough space available to capture the entire video. Capturing video from a capture card requires about 3-30MB of hard disk space per second depending on the resolution and the data format of your video. A DV capture via a FireWire card (IEEE 1394) uses up to 3.6 MB of hard drive space per second.

The following requirements have to be fulfilled:

• No applications are running that place a high demand on the processor.

• There are no applications running in full-screen mode.

• The workstation is not blocked during the entire capture process.

• There is sufficient space on your hard drive.

• You have started Nero Vision.

To capture a video from VHS, proceed as follows:

1. Connect the analog capture device to the PC using the corresponding cables and switch it on.
2. Select the Capture Video to Hard Drive option from the Start screen.
• The Capture Video screen and a window is displayed. The window recommends the Native Capturing choice.
3. Select the capture device in the Capture Device drop-down menu.

The capture device may be in Camera mode or in VCR mode. In VCR mode, the video already exists on tape (or another medium). To capture that video you need to insert the tape into your video device and play it back. You can also rewind/fast forward through the whole tape to play back specific scenes. Depending on whether the capture device is in Camera or VCR mode, some buttons are not available.

4. Choose the Native capturing option button in the upper right section of the window.


Native capturing transfers the video without losing information during conversion in the format specified by the capture device. The Native capturing option button is selected in the default settings. Capturing with Native capturing is recommended.

5. Start the playback on the capture device.
• You will see the current scene in the preview area.
6. Check playback from the capture device in the preview area.
7. If you would like to save the video file to a folder other than My Documents/NeroVision/CapturedVideo:
1. Click the More button.
• The extended area is displayed.
2. Enter the path and the file name in the Capture to File input field.
8. Click the button.
• Capturing starts and the picture that was recently captured appears.
9. Click the button to stop capturing.
• A selection list is displayed. It contains captured files that have not yet been assigned to a project.
10. If you want to capture other videos from the same source, repeat the previous two steps.
11. If you want to view the captured video:
1. Select the required video in the selection list.
2. Click the button.
• The captured video is displayed in the preview area.

• You have captured a video on the hard drive and can now edit it.