I recently got hold of a VCR so that I can transfer some old VHS tapes to my computer. And just out of curiosity I recorded some videos onto a VHS tape.
So please enjoy the Xbox One X Reveal Trailer in 4k! sorry website offline
(warning super high bitrate! 145.5 mb in size)
And just for lolz I uploaded the same file to Youtube and it did some horrible things to my video:
Normally 'VHS' style effects never really capture the true nature of the recordings (im looking at seemingly every rap video for the past year), but this actually looks legit, sure the 3dCGI looks a bit too good for 1990s style video, but right in the intro at 0:02 where it zooms on the eye and the hand on the controller could easily have been lifted from 25 years ago, this is awesome, please do more
What sort of resolution is this at? NTSC/PAL? 480/576?
I'm interested in what was the process for recording this? I've dabbled myself with encoding digital data on cassette and VHS tapes just for fun, but haven't tried high resolution video on VHS?
But please note that the tape degrades with each use, so you may want to hoard a bunch of blanks if you want to continue the hobby.
I have my own share of VHS shenanigans here in my home but I'm trying to look for an institution that will accept and make use of my VHS movie collection since I'll be moving soon and those tapes would be better off under the care of people who will actually use them.
It's PAL 576. I simply burned the video to a DVD using DVDstyler: http://www.dvdstyler.org/en/ The DVD was encoded as 16:9 and my player did not add any Letterbox (that's why the aspect is wrong). I recorded the footage using an EasyCap stick (mine was sold as a LogiLink) with VLC as a raw avi. I then encoded the file using Handbrake. My encoding profile: https://pastebin.com/rfTKkuhy
Worst way to degrade a tape and risk it tear apart: pausing the tape for half an hour.
Btw I'm looking for a PAL SVHS VCR and a Hi8 Camcorder / VCR so that I can transfer a few more tapes. But Ebay seems to be way too expensive. I only want to borrow it anyway.
I was using on old Geforce 4000 card with a AVI out port to record videos to VHS on an old machine Usually at a an excessively high refresh rate (85Hz) and 576PAL too.
That was mainly for experimenting with old hardware etc. Later I modified the recorder to directly write digital data to the tapes from an arduino.
All I have confirmed working at the moment is my Hi8 camcorder from Sony, but the thing has a bad LCD display and battery.
I also have a VHS player in line for repair (110V plugged into 220V mains, blew a few caps on visual inspection), but so far I haven't got the time nor the parts to do it.
You might want to check your local public/academic library to see if they still have the equipment.