[tech question] Commercial VHS tape to digital transfer?

Thought I'd ask here after spending the better part of an hour trying to find answers online. I need to transfer some material from a commercially-produced VHS tape (in this case a Disney film) to a Mac laptop. Has anyone done this before, and if so what have you used? Plenty of products out there to do VHS transfers of home movies to digital, I need to make sure I can transfer segments that are copy-protected on the original tape. Can't seem to find clear/unambiguous answers to this question on most products. Wondering if anyone has experience or something they can recommend that works. thanks in advance.

 

you guys are funny. here's the clip believe it or not that I'm trying to use in the classroom, only problem with the youtube version is that it washes out the animation drawings. I have an old VHS tape of this from when my kids were young, I'm hoping to transfer the 13-minute 'making of' featurette for teaching purposes. I'm hoping someone like @don grahamleone or someone else will give me a REAL answer. on a related note, that if you do a search for "Bambi" you do gets lots of unsafe-search pron. Don't ask me how I know.

 

that was basically the issue, I tried to get the on-campus tech folks to do it and they refused due to copyright issues, even though the fair use in this case is very clear.

I have shown this on a VHS player hooked up to the classroom projection system, but that gets cumbersome lugging to the classroom each time I want to do this. Plus there's no guarantee of newer classrooms having the S-video connectors. Having it on the laptop would ensure I'd have it for good.

This looks like it would work, some of the others I looked at didn't have clear answers in the Q/A section, this one does:

Showing 1-2 of 2 answers

Yes, it is capable of copying commercial VHS tapes, even those that are copy-protected.
A seller SELLER answered on October 11, 2015
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As long as your VHS will play it, this will capture the input. I'm not sure what all output file formats are available...
Jon Ryan Powers answered on October 9, 2015
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thanks HP

 

this gets confusing even when I send direct requests to the manufacturer, in this case a query I sent about this product ( Diamond VC500MAC Video Capture USB 2.0 For MAC):

From: Louis <louis@diamondmm.com>
Date: Friday, March 2, 2018 at 2:49 PM
To: Mylene <myleneg@diamondmm.com>, "Ian A." <tech06@diamondmm.com>, me
Subject: Re: Fwd: [Sales & Marketing] Sales Inquiry


Unfortunately I don't think it will work. It really depends on how old the VHS player is. Newer ones support Macrovision and will send a copyright protection signal to our capture device which in turn will send that same signal to the capture software. I would recommend you order it and try it. You will have 30 days to return it if it does not work. If it does not allow you to record the video , there is a change you will still be able view it on the computer screen using the capture software application we provide and if you can, you may use a screen recording program like OBS which is free or any other Mac OS screen recording app for MAC OS should work

Best regards,

Louis
​

@heypartner , would the age of the VHS player necessarily affect the product you suggested as well? if you can tell. my tech savvyness is adequate but not what I would call 'expert.'

 

ha, I use the DVD version to show the whole feature film, but then want to show the 1997 featurette because the Disney spin on the film in 1997 is WAY, way different than the Disney spin on the later DVD release. Best thing about the DVD release is the remastering, the film image and sound are both fantastic.

So I'm not familiar with the screen capturing options for film, I'll start looking into that, including the OBS software that the guy mentioned. I appreciate the continued ideas you guys are providing.

 

sadly, no, but I should probably give our own media folks another try, it's been a couple of years since I last asked them about this.

 

yep, I have that. the featurette he describes is really very good but misses the "Bambi's breathtaking realism" spin that the 1997 release's featurette had. We use this doing film analysis so that's the angle I try to draw attention to.

 

I have to think this would work as well on the Mac then, especially given not trying to copy to tape as you say