[yxdguy]

looking to tranfer old cassette to hardrive what converter to use and who has them ?

same for vhs to harddrive ?

 

[timlocke]

Easy! Plug any old cassette player into the sound card line input on a PC. Use Audacity ( freeware) to record and Lame ( also free) to convert to MP3.

There is also a company that specializes in kit for that sort of conversion
IonAudio.com. They make a pocket cassette player with USB output and they include a piece of software that can put the MP3 file into Itunes. We have one of their gadgets and it works well but an old cassette player from my wife's stereo system ( unused for years) worked just as well.

I converted about 30 books-on-tape for an Ipod this way.

VHS to a file I don't know but try Ionaudio.

 

[jbracing24]

I have an older A/V unit which I have plugged into the line in. So, I can plug in any device to the A/V (Cassette player, turntable, VCR) and record to software (mine is Soundstage Mastering Studio). A VCR makes a great audio tape recorder, by-the-way.
There are a number of devices like turntables and cassette players that are USB connectible.

If you have in mind to rip movies from a VCR, you will need to find a way to connect the video stream and you will run into Macrovision copyright issues with most commercial tapes.

 

[pappcam]

If you have in mind to rip movies from a VCR, you will need to find a way to connect the video stream and you will run into Macrovision copyright issues with most commercial tapes.

I was surprised when I tried transferring some commercial VHS tapes to my hard drive a while back. I had no idea that the technology existed on these videotapes. From what I've read, it's quite hard to crack as well.

 

[David Susilo]

it's very easy to crack macrovision on VHS. I can't discuss it here, but it' very very easy and the solution have been around for more than a decade.

 

[yxdguy]

thank you

 

[alwjoplinmo]

Windows built in Sound Recorder program can record mono thru the microphone jack.
Just make sure you turn the cassette player volume down real low to start.
Xitel also has a audio to USB adapter to record stereo tapes, records, it will even record from the computer headphone jack.

 

[David Susilo]

for cassette only, you can use a Behringer line-in to USB module (about $50 shipped) and run Audacity as a recorder (freeware). This way you'll get the best possible cassette recording for the money... far better quality than the soundcard line-in.