Convert VHS to a Mp4 Using OBS Studio | Mac & Windows 2023-2024 Tutorial

in this video I'm going to give you my updated guide on how to capture and digitize your VHS [Music] tapes so let's first talk about the hardware requirements that you'll need first thing you need is either a Mac or a Windows PC computer a USB capture device in this case I'm using the digit now VHS capture device if you are using a a USBC computer you also need this USBC to usba converter composite cable and a VHS player and then you're going to plug in one end of the composite cable to the adapter and the other end to the output of the VHS player and then plug the USB part from the adapter to your computer now let's talk about the capture resolution so looking on the internet there is a whole variety of different answers and there isn't really a definitive answer and after doing some research I'm going to go with 720x 480 if you're on the ntsc format 30 frames per second and for pal is 768 by 576 25 frames per second now if you know a different answer to this please leave your comments below so what we're going to do now is head on to OBS projects.com and download OBS Studios for my so I'm going to download the Mac OS version and you're going to pick between an Intel Mac or a apple silicon Mac so if you have an Intel computer Mac go ahead select Mac OS intel if you have a M1 or M2 Mac then you're going to pick Apple silicon my case my test machine is a Intel Mac so I'm just going to click on the Intel version and download it to my computer once the download has been finished let's look for the DMG and it could be in your download area or your desktop my case it's on downloads for my computer so I'm going to click on the DMG and all I do is to install OBS Studios on a Mac I just drag the OBS icon into the applications folder and we're going to wait for it to install and once it has been installed just go ahead and double click on OBS and we're going to wait for the application to Launch now you might get the screen says that OBS would like to access the microphone OBS need to access the microphone to enable audio input in this case just go ahead and click okay and this is optional if you want to get automatic updates in my case I'm just going to click on don't check and when you first open up OBS for the first time on a computer you might get this configuration wizard window and you could definitely just pick one of these option if you want OBS to create a default optimize settings for you or you can always customize it later on so I'm just going to click cancel so first thing we're going to do is we're going to mute this microphone and auxiliary section right here so that way when we do record we will not pick up the sound from our internal microphone next up we're going to add our sources and you always want to make sure in OBS that you have at least one scene and just click on the plus sign right here in the sources area click video capture and I could rename that device right there and I'm just going to rename it to VHS and I'm going to click okay and now I'm going to click on AV to USB 2.0 that's what my device shows when you add your video capture device you might see this other prompt that's asking you to allow OBS to access your cameras go ahead and click on okay now I could use a preset that's included in my device and the resolutions will only go to 640 by 480 now if I uncheck Ed presets I could pick one of these right here as well if you want the highest quality as possible you could try using 720 by 480 but anything beyond that is really it's good just really to blow up the picture and it's just going to look more pixelated or possibly just quity isn't that great so we're going to go with 720 by 480 and we're going to keep the FPS at 30 frames per second or 25 if you are in the power region and then I'm just going to click okay now I also want to resize this canvas right here to just make it look like it matches perly so I just go to settings go to video and and I could just type in 720 by 480 and do the same thing for the output scale and I'm going to click okay so there it is and again with the resolution my advice is to play around with the different resolutions that's offered from your capture device and see which quality looks better for you we also need to add the audio from our V HS capture device in the audio mixer so we're just going to go back to settings then go to audio and mic auxiliary audio 2 we could just click on that and then select the USB 2.0 mic and then we just click okay now the other thing you need to do is you want to change the advanced audio property so just click on these three dots right here click on Advanced Audio properties and and what we're going to do is we are going to look at the mic auxiliary 2 and we can set to monitor off or monitor only mute output and monitor and output so the thing is with monitoring you could either leave that off meaning that you won't be able to hear the sound but still going to capture it you can monitor the recording but there won't be any output so you still see know the sound is being recorded but you won't be able to hear it if you want to be able to Monitor and hear the sound being recorded then you want to click on Monitor and output and right here this is where you get to select know the audio tracks how many tracks do you want in your video file and for me I'm just going to select one audio track once you have that completed just go ahead click close And a few other things that you want want to look at is in the video section so we'll go back to settings go to output and you want to change this output mode to advance and let's go to recording and what we want to do right now is kind of change the recording settings so you could change the recording path for my case I'm just going to keep it in the movies folder the recording format I will make it into EG 4 video encoder I'm going to select x264 now everyone's computers could be a little bit different now if you're using a faster Mac I will suggest you might want to use the hardware encoder but for my case I'm using a slower one so I'm just going to use the 264 I'm going to keep the audio encoder just the way it is again one audio track I'm not going to rescale the output and right here you get to control the rate or the bit rate of your video so it all depends again on your computer you're going to have to play around the settings to see what works for your computer my case I'm just going to keep it as CBR 2500 kilobits per second again it all depends on your computer and the CPU usage preset you can set to either very fast that's by default or you could go to even Ultra fast or super fast I'm going to go to ultra fast and higher equals less CPU and after that I'm just going to click apply and then click okay so now you're ready to start recording so the first thing I would do is I would just hit record first in OBS and then once you have queued up the location of the VHS where you want to start recording just go ahead hit play on your VHS player and start recording and once you've have finished recording your VHS make sure press stop on your VHS player and one thing you want to notice and keep an eye out is during the recording process the CPU usage if you're using a lot of CPU it's going to give you this message in my case I don't see it right now so everything's okay now when you're done recording just go ahead click on stop recording and it'll tell you that the recording has been saved into the destination folder and I'm going to open it in quick time and it looks like it's been captured looks like it's been captured and let's see what information we could get we could go to the window show movie inspector yeah the resolution is a 720x480 video let's see what happens if we go full screen screen so there it is you just capture your VHS tapes and then made it into a digital format like the MP4 first thing you want to do is you want to go to OBS projects.com and this time if you're on a Windows computer go ahead and download the windows version of OBS Studios once you have downloaded go ahead and launch the installer so you can install the software so once you have installed OBS Studios just go ahead and launch the program now again when you first start off with the software you might get this Auto configuration wizard you could either use this to kind of set up OBS or you could do it manually which I'll be doing that later on in this tutorial so I'm just going to click cancel and what we're going to do now is we want to make sure that we have at least one scene right here and we could rename this to something else but I'm just going to leave it as scene now we're going to add our sources and I'm just going to hit the plus sign go to video capture device and in this case I'm just going to rename this to VHS and I'm going to look for my device which is called av2 USB 2.0 and I don't want to select device defaults what I want to do is custom so I could change the resolution and I'm going to keep it at 720 by 480 and let's do 30 frames per second and we're going to click okay and just to double check we're going go back to settings go back to video and our base canvas is set to 720 by 480 I want to change the output resolution as well 720 by 480 click apply and then okay next thing you want to do is you want to go back to settings go back to audio for desktop audio we'll just leave it as default we're going to mute it later on before we start capturing our VHS tapes same thing for desktop audio too we're actually going to disable that mic auxiliary audio that would be like a microphone if you have something connected I'm going to keep that disable what I want to do is I want to use the mic auxiliary audio 2 then select microphone USB 2.0 mic that is what the adapter is using so I'm just going to click apply and then okay and I'm also going to click on the advanced audio properties I just click on these three dots right here right next to Mike slox 2 and I want to make sure that there is just one audio track now now if you want two audio tracks you could just leave you can just check off two but for me I'm just going to check off one and that will be the mic slox 2 and I also want to make sure that I am able to Monitor and hear the output as well so I'm going click close next thing I want to do is go back to settings and we're actually going to go back to output and output mode you want to change from simple to advance and let's go to the recording Tab and then it's going to show you the recording path and you can change that by clicking on browse you can select a different folder I'm going keep it EG 4 and I'm basically just going to leave these by default and again depending on your computer you're going to have to play around with the settings and see which one works for you for the preset I'm just going to click on recording and then I'm going to keep it balanced and the target bit rate I'm going to leave it at this bit rate first now if I notice that it starts hogging up the CPU on my computer then I'm going change it make it make it a little bit lower so this is the part where you do have to experiment a little bit because it really depends on your computer so for now I'm just going to hit apply and then okay so now I'm ready to record so what I like to do is I click on the start recording button first then I press play on my VHS player once I'm done I just press on the stop button on the VHS player and also make sure to click on the stop recording button in OBS Studios and it'll tell you where the recording was saved so now I'm going to look for that video file and here is the file and I'm just going to skim through it real quick there it is the same capture yeah so now it's in a MP4 format and let's also see properties and the resolution is 720 by 480 now here are some additional bonus tips for everyone on Windows if you're having trouble seeing your video capture device let's say for example you just add the sources but it's showing a black screen what you want to do is you want to make sure you search for camera privacy settings once you are in the privacy and security under the camera section you want to make sure camera access is turned on and also the let apps access your camera that is on scroll all the way down to make sure OBS is added into that section and also you want to make sure let desktop apps access your camera if you don't see the capture device in Mac OS go ahead and go to system settings go to privacy and security and then under the camera section you want to make sure that OBS is allowed to use the computer's camera and also microphone as well and under accessibility you also want to make sure OBS is enabled as well if for some reason your audio is out of sync while you're capturing you want to play around with the sync offset all you do is you just click on the three dots next to the audio source of your capture device go Advanced Audio properties and you want to play around with the sync offset normally I find that 100 milliseconds should fix the issue but again it all depends on your videos and you're just going to have to play around with it if for some reason your capture device is not being detected by your computer you're going to have to find the drivers so make sure you know the manufacturer of your capture device and see on the website if they have any drivers for it now if you're experiencing flickering issues or discoloring issues it might be a problem with the capture device itself uh there is a post about this within the OBS Forum so I'll leave a link in the description and you can read more about it so that's how you use OBS Studios to capture and digitize your VHS collection I'll leave all the links in the description to all the products that I mentioned and also the Articles and they are affiliate links so if you do make a purchase using those links I do get a commission do you have an old USB printer and you want to make it into a wireless printer you can check about that tutorial right here

Channel: Tech That Doesn't Byte

Views: 32,073

Keywords: capture device, how to, video capture, vhs tapes, convert vhs to mp4, video to digital, home movies, how to transfer vhs tapes to computer, video to digital software, video to digital conversion, video to digital converter, convert vhs to digital, video tape, old vhs, video adapter, vhs to digital, obs, obs studio, MacOS, video capture device, Digitnow, digitize, convert vhs to mp4 2023, how to digitize vhs 2023, Windows, how to transfer vhs to computer 2023, vhs to mp4 2024

Id: pYuDSU-7LyI

Length: 17min 31sec (1051 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 07 2023