I'd recommend Lagarith over huffyuv, because Lagarith is more uniformly compatible there are many huffyuv versions and spinoffs that some media players and system setups don't recognize, and it won't handle YV12. A 90-minute SD video with Lagarith lossless compression would be about a 35 to 40 GB file. I do not have space on my computer to create an output file that big. But if it's old, damaged tape that needs work, you're wasting your time with PowerDirector.ġ minute of video created a 1.6Gb file. If all you want to do is cut and join scenes and then encode, you don't need to get involved with comp0licated procedures.Īnother choice would be something like a Hauppauge PVR, which records SD tape in SD format to a computer. The key word here is 'edit', by which people mean a lot of things. Knowing how to use VirtualDub (free) and Avisynth (free) and some of their 400 filters (free) would be helpful, and you don't have to be a guru with these apps. You should ditch PowerDirector ASAP and find something better. Not all capture apps will recognize all capture devices, and vice-versa. VirtualDub is free, and it's one of the best capture utils around but it depends on what you're using as a capture device. $5 a tape? Is that a typo? If it is the actual price charge, run away from them as far and as fast as possible. What process do they use? I have well over 100 tapes to process, so the most efficient process would be awesome. I know there are quite a few conversion businesses which charge $5/tape or more to convert.

How to convert vhs to digital software