Sure, it's 2 years of running time. It's not 2 years of labor time, though. Put the tape in, push "play" on the VCR, "record" on the app running on the computer, go spend some quality time with your friends, come back in 2 hours, push "finish", and stick in another tape. Then, simply scan or photograph her index card for it.

To reduce the calendar time, get more VCRs (often going for $5 each at the thrift store), more cheap computers, and more capture devices, and do them in parallel.

Some of the tapes will be unplayable, sure. Toss 'em in the trash.

A RAID array full of unlabelled .MP4s of borderline-unwatchable VHS transfers isn't much use to anyone. Good VCRs and timebase correctors aren't cheap; keeping those VCRs running well is a major challenge due to age and the lack of spare parts. Getting a good transfer from an old tape is a lot more complicated than just pressing record. Anyone who works with video will tell you that metadata is both essential and enormously time-consuming.

There's a world of difference between getting some sort of video off the tape and producing a useful archive.

> unlabelled

I said: "scan or photograph her index card for it"

> There's a world of difference between getting some sort of video off the tape and producing a useful archive.

With 8000 tapes (and for most people), the choice isn't a consumer grade copy or a professional grade copy. It's a consumer grade copy or no copy.

Ah yes, cheap second hand VHS players, definetly not famed for chewing up cassettes.

> Ah yes, cheap second hand VHS players, definetly not famed for chewing up cassettes.

IIRC most of the best VCRs for digitization have been worn out from years and years of use in other digitization efforts (like home movie digitization businesses).

I've bought second hand ones, and never had one chew up a tape. They'll sometimes need the heads cleaned, which you can do with a qtip and alcohol or just get one of those head cleaner tapes.

(Putting a tape in with a broken case, however, will get you what you expect.)

A single person could probably run 20 machines at once. That's 800 hours of labor, at $15/hr, is $12,000.

May you never work for bosses whose estimates are as optimistic as yours.

Actually, it's conservative. How many times per hour can you push a tape in and press "play" then click "record"?

But hey, I've digitized a hundred or so home movie tapes for my extended family. I'm sure I've got it all wrong.

What resolution did you use to capture? What deinterlacing algorithm did you use to process the footage? Did you run the VCRs output through a quality TBC?

If the answers to those questions are "I don't know" or "I don't care", then you got it wrong. If you ended up with a 29.97fps or 30fps file, or if you ended up with a 320x240 (or 352x240) file, then you got it wrong.

https://www.amazon.com/Elgato-Video-Capture-Digitise-iPad/dp... at its highest setting, 640*480