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Link for the software - you will need 1. Mac (with line-in port)2. Cassette Tape Play. As for how to transfer cassette to computer, VHS to DVD Platinum is no wonder the best solution. Connect your cassette player and computer by a 3.5mm audio cable, insert one end into the cassette player and the other end into the computer. Then insert your cassette into the player. CONVERTS TO MP3: Use the included USB cable to connect the tape deck to an available USB port on your computer for quick transfer of music on your tapes to MP3 format on your computer. Works on PC and Mac computers; SUPPORTS CrO2: The double tapes player features CrO2 tape selector.
Matt Cone May 16, 2007 TutorialsMacMusic
We didn't live through the heyday of vinyl, but we do own a few LPs. The recording industry is currently trying to figure out if we have the right to 'own' digital copies of our records. While they work on that, we're going to quietly show you how to digitize old LPs and cassette tapes. Just don't put the resulting files on a peer-to-peer network!
Connect Your Turntable to Your Mac
First, you need to connect your turntable to your Mac. Most Macs have an audio input jack, like the one on our eMac:
Not the most intuitive symbol for audio input.
Not all Macs have audio input jacks. If your Mac doesn't have one, look into a third-party solution like Griffin's iMic.
Of course, you'll need a cable to connect the record player to your Mac. It's not advisable to connect a record player directly to your Mac - you know, for the lower sound quality reasons. You can use the headphone jack on a receiver with a phono port, or you can use another suitable pre-amp. A headphone jack and a long enough cord like this will do the trick with a receiver or a tape deck.
After you plug everything in, you're ready to rock and roll!
Configure Your System Preferences
Now that your Mac can hear the recording, we need to make it listen. From the Apple menu, select System Preferences, and then select Sound.
If you have an iMac, eMac or Apple portable, set the input to Microphone and run your finger over your Mac's built-in mic. (The mic looks like a little hole in your case.) This will make the input level indicator go crazy.
Note that the blue Input Level bar is at maximum.
When we begin recording, a 'crazy' Input Level bar will be a very bad thing. Set the sensitivity of your audio input by adjusting the Input Volume slider - set it right in the middle.
Finally, select Line In as the device for sound input. Close the System Preferences.
Your Mac is now ready to listen to your record player!
Getting started with Audacity and LAME
Your Mac is ready to listen, but now we need to make it understand. We'll use Audacity, a wonderful free and open source digital audio editor. It's like Quicktime Pro for audio, but on steroids. There are a few Mac applications dedicated to ripping analog audio, but Audacity is free, and we like open source software.
Audacity is available at Sourceforge.net along with a bunch of other open source projects. Go ahead and download it. And, as long as we're shooting through the Internets, we should pick up a copy of the LAME codec from SpaghettiCode.org. We'll use this to compress our songs into the highly compatible MP3 format.
Once you've clicked the appropriate 'Download' hyperlinks, you should have an Audacity folder somewhere on your hard disk. If you're using Safari, the easiest way to find it is to click to the magnifying glass in your download window.
Audacity and LAME should be in the same place. Copy LAME into the Audacity folder, and send the whole thing to the Applications folder. (That is, unless you like having programs all over the place.)
With the record player connected to your Mac, launch Audacity.
Like most powerful programs, Audacity can be daunting to a beginner. But since we're just using it to make a recording, the learning curve is tolerable and there's relatively little set-up.
Let's configure Audacity's preferences. From the Audacity menu, select Preferences.
Select the Audio I/O tab. Make sure that your line-in is the recording source by selecting Built-In Input from the Device menu.
Select the File Formats tab. You should use AIFF (Apple/SGI 32 bit float) for uncompressed audio and, while we're here, we can make use of the LAME library we downloaded earlier.
Click Find Library and point Audacity to the LAME library, which should be in your Audacity folder if you closely followed our instructions.
With that completed, Audacity can compress audio into the MP3 format. It might be a good idea to bump up the default MP3 bit rate if you're an audiophile or if you have room for higher quality music.
Preparation and the Recording Process
To get a quality recording, you'll need to prevent clipping the sound waves. 'Clipping' literally means removing parts of the sound wave because of improper loudness from the source material.
Note that the peaks of the waves are flattened abruptly, or 'clipped.'
To prevent this problem, let's run some test audio through Audacity. Play a recording or radio station through your receiver or tape deck. We wouldn't recommend using a vinyl record for this, since it will require resetting the needle. With the source playing, switch over to Audacity and click the record button.
The record button looks like a standard record button on a VCR or tape deck.
Blue lines will show up in two rectangles. The rectangles are called the tracks - you'll have left and right audio for a stereo signal. The lines represent the loudness of the source. You want a nice clean wave with the highest highs and lowest lows near, but not outside, the track.
If you're getting some clipping, adjust the volume on the source.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, you could have a very small wave that will make a very quiet digital sound file.
If this is the case, carefully turn up the volume or increase the sensitivity of the line-in. Clipping is much worse than low signal input, but do try to get a strong signal for the sake of your effort and audio.
Once you're reasonably happy with the sound levels you're getting, it's time for the real thing. Stop the audio and close any and all test tracks, just like you would a window.
- With no audio signal being transmitted to your Mac, hit the record button in Audacity to create a lead-in. As quickly as you wish and can, start playing your record.
Sit back and let the record play through. When the first side ends, click Stop in Audacity. Now for a little insurance. Save your progress by selecting Save Project As… in the File menu, just like you would save a file in any other program. You'll get a warning, but just click OK.
This will create a .aup file and a data folder (in the format: Example_data) in the same directory. The .aup file will let you edit your recording later, and the data folder holds (surprise!) all the audio data.
Defining and Exporting Tracks
Now that we have our audio, we need to be able to see it in its entirety. Audacity has a zoom tool in its toolbar, just like an image viewer (i.e., Preview). Zoom out until you can see your whole wave.
The selection tool in the upper left-hand of the tool bar; the zoom in the lower right.
The default tool that Audacity gives you is the selection tool, which looks an awful lot like the text selection cursor from a word processing program. Obviously, a pause between tracks has no sound and will be represented in the wave form by a flat line. Use the selection tool like you're selecting a line of text and highlight your first song. It's nice to know how long each song is, just in case there's a 'quiet moment' in a song. (Don't be fooled!)
After highlighting a song, select Add Label at Selection from the Project menu. A label track appears under the stereo tracks. You can enter the name of the song, or any other text that will help keep you organized, in the label track.
Ceci n'est pas un son. (Art humor.)
Define and label all the tracks, and then select Export Multiple from the File menu. Choose either uncompressed aiff format or teensy mp3. Or even the open source Oog Vorbis format if you like. (But it won't play on your iPod.) Numbering consecutively will help keep your tracks in order. Just add a convenient File name prefix such as the album title.
Open your new audio files with iTunes, edit the ID3 tags if you like, and burn like any other audio CD.
Whew! You're Finished
These files will not be of the same quality as a ripped CD, or a file from the iTunes Store. Most analog audio signals have minor imperfections, such as normalization issues and pops, clicks and scratches in the case of a vinyl LP. Audacity can fix these issues, but it's more of an art than a science. Audacity has a variety of filters that can be used to fix these imperfections, but these are advanced techniques. We've spent enough time on the basics alone! There are other programs that can remove sonic 'dirt.' And iTunes has a normalize feature. But who can resist the warmth of vinyl converted to a digital audio file?
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Memories fade over time and some are easily lost forever, especially if they're stored on old VHS tapes. This is my guide on how to transfer your VHS tapes to your Mac, so you can store them for the future.
When I came home for Christmas eight years ago in 2010, my parents had organized all of their old VHS tapes from when I was a kid. When we watched some of them, I realized that these tapes needed to be transfered to digital form before they deteriorated further.
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I took me seven years, but last year I decided to finally transfer these tapes to digital form as a Christmas gift to my parents.
This is how I did it, step by step.
1. Getting the equipment
Transferring VHS tapes to a computer requires getting some equipment.
Luckily, my parents had already done a lot of the hard work by having not one but two VHS players in great shape (one broke down and we had to repair it for $72, but that's another story).
This is the equipment I used (excluding my Macbook):
VHS player
VHS players are easily found on websites like Ebay, unless you already have one laying around. If not, perhaps you know someone you can borrow one from.
VHS-C cassettes
Chances are your old VHS cassettes are of the smaller VHS-C format. These types of cassettes were introduced in 1982 and were primarily used in consumer-grade camcorders. They need a VHS-C adapter to be played on a VHS player.
VHS-C adapter
A VHS-C adapter is basically a battery-driven hollow VHS cassette in which you insert a smaller VHS-C cassette.
You insert it in your VHS player and play it like a regular cassette. You can buy these adapters on websites like Amazon.
Video capture dongle
There are lots of different video capture dongles available today. What they do is that they transfer the analog signal from the VHS player to a digital one that your computer can process.
The dongles are always bundled with some video capture software (right?) for recording the video feed and saving it as a video file.
I used Plexgear Moviesaver 600 from the Swedish company Kjell & Company. It works for both macOS and Windows and cost me about $50 (400 sek).
The bundled video capture software Empia (for macOS) is somewhat buggy and not that well designed, bit it is simple and does what it has to.
SCART to RCA cable
The Plexgear video capture dongle connects to your computer through one of its USB ports. However, it needs another cable to connect to your VHS player.
I connected it to my parents' VHS player using a brand new SCART to RCA cable that cost me about $24 (200 sek).
No TV?
Nope, with this setup the video feed will be displayed on your computer screen with the bundled video capture software.
2. Connecting the equipment
Once you've got all the hardware, the setup is quite simple as you can see in the image below.
Kjell & Company has also put together this product video (in Swedish) on how to connect their video capture dongle to your computer.
When I first connected the dongle to the VHS player, I ran into some trouble. I had used an old SCART connector that didn't work. I don't know why, but it had only eight pins. The new one I bought worked fine and it had 20 pins. Coincidence?
3. Transferring the VHS tapes
When you transfer a tape, it's being recorded as it's being played. If a tape contains 30 minutes of footage, the transfer will take 30 minutes. Each transferred tape will then be saved as its own video file.
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For using the video capture software Empia that is bundled with the Plexgear dongle, I have the following advice:
- Remember to set the input video source to composite video or S-Video depending on which one you're using.
- Set a long time limit (you have to set one) if you don't know how much footage a VHS tape contains.
- Start by recording just a few seconds of video to make sure audio is being recorded and that everything is working.
4. Compressing the video files
After transferring the first tape, the file size ended up being much larger than I expected. A recording of just around 30 minutes weighed 1.5 GB. Another tape with a runtime of two hours and six minutes took up a whooping 25 GB. I needed to compress these files.
Luckily, two friends of mine with lots of experience in video editing recommended the free video converter application Handbrake (available for macOS, Windows and Ubuntu).
Handbrake worked wonders and shrunk the 30 minute recording from 1.5 GB to 450 MB. The 25 GB recording was shrunk to just 1.5 GB. Quality stayed the same, nice!
5. Storing the video files
When it comes to storing the video files, I'd recommend storing them on as many places as possible. Don't put all of your eggs in one basket. I store them on:
- My Macbook
- My Time Machine backup hard drive
- My iCloud account
- A USB memory stick
My dad also stores the video files like this. I was going to store them on my Dropbox account too, but I didn't have enough space.
Do not just burn the video files on DVDs. These DVDs will deteriorate just like your old VHS tapes.
6. Editing the video files
After transferring, compressing and storing your video files you might want to edit them. Several of my video files contained long moments with just a blank screen before the next segment.
When I find the time, I'll delete these moments using iMovie on macOS. If you're using Windows, the software Windows Movie Maker will probably be suitable.
Wrapping up
Transferring old VHS tapes to digital form is time-consuming, but very rewarding. It might be technically tricky and expensive, but once you've done it the video will be there forever (if you store it well).
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Some memories will surprise you, many will make you smile and others will be bittersweet to watch.
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Here is a short video clip from July 7, 1994 of my little bunny rabbit Snuffe. He turned eleven years old before he passed away in the Summer of 2004. I still miss him from time to time.
Do you have any questions? Let me know in the comment section.
/Alex
