I am looking for a simple solution to record stuff from video cameras to hd's. I dont want to half to hook it up to a computer and hassle with capture cards and stuff. i just want to hook it up to a vcr and record onto a HD.

And i see some vcr's have usb ports on them. i was wondering if you can hook a external usb hd up to them and record strait to it?

your best bet is use a capture card and windows movie maker (its free with XP). its not the best program but its very easy to use (wizard steps you though everything)

I haven't seen a VCR in at least 5 years! DVD burners are dirt cheap now. capture direct to PC then burn to DVD is what i would do.

I dont realy want to get a computer involved with this. i am looking for a stand alone solution.

You could get a set top DVD Burner, and record from your camera onto a DVD. I know this isint directly onto a hard drive.... but you could then put the dvd in a pc and rip it to the hard drive.

What exactly are you trying to do? Why do you want to save stuff on a hard drive, without having a computer involved? Its kinda hard to access info on a hard drive without a pc.

you may want to rethink what you trying to do... keep a few things in mind. Your final video will only be as good as the source and every time you change the format of your media you will lose quality

i.e. moving from camcorder to vcr to hard drive, the best quality you will get is the vcr quality (which is not very good)

moving from camcorder to hard drive by means of a video capture card, the best quality depends on the settings of the card (can be very good or very bad) I can get near DVD quality by this method.

Moving from camcorder to set top dvd may give the best quality but i've never used one.

can you give us a little more details on what you are trying to do?

I want to be able to set up a video cam and record at sertain times and then be able to go into and play those times. i tried just using vhs's but the quality of vhs's is to low. and i dont want to waste a bunch of dvd's burning onto them. I want to be able to record onto the hd and then be able to play that later when i review it. I want to be able to record from 7am to 5pm ever day at this certain machine at work. To see how much work is getting done. But vhs quality is horrad and it would take diffrent dvd's everday.

My plan was to hook a 200gb hd up to a vcr so i can record from the video cam strait onto the hd in good quality and in long periods. Then later be able to review that off the hd.

Also taking the stuff off the hd would be simple. i would just plug the usb hd onto my computer. That takes all 5 secs. but it dont tie up a computer recording all day.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16882116049 is a example of a dvd/vcr with a usb port on it. now my question is this. Can you hook a media device up to this and record strait to it?

ah you're over thinking the process! all you need is a cheap security setup. a small black and white close circuit camera and a time lapse VCR or PVR. right tools for the right job will make your life alot easier.

if you are trying to monitor someones computer usage just install a key logger or screen capture program that runs in the background.

no this is going into a factory setup. we had a guy running a machine and was getting X amount done. We put a machine about 10 feet away and hired a nother guy to run that machine. well the X amount started droping off. and we keep getting excuses. I just want to find the real reason. And i cant be around all the time to keep them working so this will do it for me.

I think CCTV would be your best route. You can find cheap setups on e-bay and tons of other places on the web. i think X10 is a cheap one (but their web site sucks). CCTV setups can vary greatly on number of camera's, recording time/type and price.

I got a 2 camera setup from radio shack for $150 a few years ago when my car kept getting broke into. it works great. came with a small monitor with a adjustable timer (switched between camera's every x number of seconds) i hooked the output of that to my capture card but you could use your vcr. the quality was about like watching TV (or a VHS tape) so straight to a VCR wouldn't hurt anything. i think you can get 8 hours VHS's so you're not swapping tapes all day. or you could get a time lapse or CCTV PVR like i said in the other post. (btw if its for a business it can all be a tax write off!)

if it comes down to it, kick the guy in the a$$ and hire some else

The quality of VHS (240 lines of resolution) is too low?? I'm not sure this statement makes sense. VHS should be more than enough quality to get what you want (which is an "eye in the sky"). If VHS is not doing it for you, recording it to a HD won't make the quality any better... it'll be the same quality, just in a different format. If you need higher quality then you need to go get a new camera... maybe DV (500 lines of resolution) ? What type of camera (make & model) is it that you're using now ? How much do you want to spend ? You can get some great DV HD recorders... these things are cool, but they are $$.

Again, i'm thinking the camera may be to blame for the poor picture quality, not necessarily that it's being recorded to VHS. (If you haven't tried using a new VHS tape, then maybe you could try that first). Here is a stand-alone solution for any camera having a composite (RCA) output. (you would need a BNC to RCA adapter, which is only a few bucks. LINK to recorder

cheers,
gs

I havent recorded anything yet. im just going off past. Ive recorded stuff from my cable box to vhs tapes and the quality was bad. who knows it could of been the tapes. Thing i dont like about the vhs's is you can only record afew hours on them. I want to be able to record 8-10 hours and then record 8-10 hours the next day and be able to skim threw it once a week.

Hense the reason i like the idea of a hd. Once a week take the hd out. plug it into my computer and skim threw it. seems like a good solution to me. the vhs idea id half to take abunch of vhs's and put them in my vcr and skim threw it. not the best solution if u ask me. and burning it to dvd's would take time and alot of $$ for media.

Say i get a Stand Alone DVD-RW player. Hook a Cam to it. Put in a DVD-RW. Could i record one day then record the next day over it? So i would not half to have a cd for everday? Maybe have 5 DVD and keep recording on them. And replace them once a month or something?

A simple Personal Video Recorder (PVR) will solve your problem. like a cheap tivo or clone. hook up a camera and tell it to record just that signal. then you could fast forward, pause, rewind, all that good stuff right on the source. a PVR is hard drive based (no tapes) i think this as close as your going to get.

I'm sure if you had cleaned the heads on your VCR and used a new tape (in SP mode... only 2 hours) any recorded material would have been pretty good... assuming there is nothing wrong with your vcr. VHS would be more than enough quality for what your looking to do, but I guess this is all besides the point... you don't want tapes, so I guess we're back to your original question.

I'm not sure i've ever seen a VCR with a usb or firewire port for hooking up a hard drive. This would be one special VCR for sure... it would have to be like a VCR/DVD Recorder combo unit perhaps ? There would need to be some on-board encoder chip for making an MPEG-2 stream, which would then need to be piped to the USB/Firewire port. Can you provide a link to anything like this ? ... you said you have seen these ?

Another option... there are camcorders now that record directly to internal hard disks... i'm assuming all your have to do is download it each day. Take a look at these. Pretty neat stuff... otherwise that large player I linked to in my last post would give you more recording time... there are recorders larger than those as well... up to 300GB i think ??

gs

edit: maybe something like this is what you need... of course you'll still need a video camera to connect to it. what do you plan to use for a video camera ? looks like you can attach an extra hard disk via the USB port for added capacity too.

I had a similar problem at work. I needed to watch tires moving along a conveyor system making sure they were going to the correct conveyor lanes.
I got an ethernet based webcam, and hung it up in the ceiling. It came with software to run on ANY pc on the network and would create time lapse video of the whole thing.
When i wanted to watch the system overnight I just left my pc on. Then in the morning I had some video to review, and worked the bugs out of the system.

Don't worry about it tying up the whole pc all day, you can still do other work on it, it didn't take up much resources and if you reboot, you simply lose video for that 2 minutes.

I don't remember the make or model off hand, but can look it up tomorrow at work if you want to do this.
You won't have to mess with swapping hard drives once a week, to browse on the pc. Plus you won't have to buy 2 or more external hd's to put out on the floor.

Yes, this will work as you suggest with one caveat. I have a Panasonic ES20 and rotate DVD-RW discs for recording shows. You can also use DVD-RAM discs which will be a better bet but they are more expensive. My Pany however does not have an IR blaster so depending on the capabilities of your camera you will have a hard time doing time lapse recordings (you get only 2-4 hrs of recording time per disc with any reasonable level of clarity). If your camera can be controlled by an IR remote and the set top DVD burner has IR blaster you should be able to setup timed recordings without difficulty. The reverse might work but I've never heard of a cam with IR blaster functions. Otherwise your only option may be a dedicated security PVR. A regular PVR may need to be setup to record constantly and as long as the HD in the PVR is large enough and you review the video everyday this wouldn't be a problem. Still an expensive option. Alternatively, as long as you have a decent network the stand alone net cames are great because you can access them from any computer with web access and you can have the images sent just about anywhere (and they're fairly easy to setup)- but they typically send still images or short, 15fps video at VHS resolutions (not ideal).

Good luck...

Thanks for the info.

Chris can you give me a link to one of these DVD-RAM discs. Also how many records do you get out of one disk?

Here is a link to one brand at Buy.com...

http://www.buy.com/prod/Maxell_4_7GB_DVD_R...1/10259793.html

these discs allow chase-play type functions on a DVD set top recorder much like a hard drive based DVR. There are a few other features to them as well. However, they have the same capacity limits as a regular DVD-R/RW disc. Most DVD recorders allow you to specify video quality in terms of standard disc recording times. Usually these times will be 1, 2, 4, 6 and 8 hours (varies somewhat from manufacturer to manufacturer). As record times increase for a standard 4.7G DVD video quality drops off. Generally the 2 hour setting will give you the same quality as your typical cable or satalite feed. 4hours is equivalent to superVHS and 6 hours is standard VHS or a bit worse. 8 hours is unwatchable by any standard. If the recorder supports recording onto dual layer discs (9.4G) you can double the record time at any video quality setting (most dvd recorders will read dual layer discs but not all will record to them). DVD-ram discs are usually only compatible with the recorder in which they were recorded to- although some computer dvd burners can handle dvd-ram discs as well compatibility may be sketchy (haven't tried this myself).

If you need to record a full 8 hour shift without time-lapse, your best bet is probably a HD based DVR unit. Setting up time-lapse on anything other than a dedicated security unit may be difficult although can be done. For example, my panny has 6 or 8 progammable timers (I can't remember which) so it could be setup to do daily recordings for the shift using 1 disc for each 4 hours. Programming the recordings for the employees shift times (start to first break, break to lunch, lunch to second break, break to shift end). At the 4 hour setting you'll get SVHS quality and only need to change the disc at lunch.

I hope that helps.

That does help. Can you record multiple times on the DVD-RAM Media? you may i answered this b4 and i just missed it.

What about something like this.
http://cgi.ebay.com/Philips-Series-1-TiVo-...1QQcmdZViewItem

i looked it up a another website and it says it can record anything thats hooked up to its inputs. So all i would need to do is hook a camera up and program that to record whenever i wanted it to. You can also get bigger hd's for it. Seems like a cheap solution for my problem if it works.

Just some points. That ebay listing is fine, however that particular unit does not ship with a hard disk, so you'll need to add one. (if indeed you were thinking of buying that particular one) Make sure you'll be able to set the timer to record a video input (from your camera) and not just an incoming cable signal. (I would think it can, but you want to be sure) Also make sure you can use the scheduling/recording features without having a Tivo subscription. (I personally would like to know this as these boxes are designed to be used with their service to make recording easy; guess I just assumed; no pay, no play) If those check out looks like a cheap solution.

gs

Im gonna go for it and then after ill let you guys know. From what the other website said you record anything hooked up to its svideo or rca input jacks. Also its a Standalone class recorder so no subsciption is needed. Hopefuly it takes a normal ide hd. Because i have aton of those laying around.

I just found a website that sell image kits for the HD's. So when ever i get the unit all i gotta do is install a normal PC hard drive in it with the image from the place. and hopefuly this beast will do what i was looking for. If not im sure i can find a use for it.

You know whats bad? i have 4 dvd players in my front room. and ever one of them fuken dont work. I swear dvd players have a god dam short life span. I got a philips and some cheap portable one and one in my computer and i gotta get my laptop out to watch a dam dvd. It drives me insane. I gotta find a new dvd player. Id like to get one that outputs hdmi. but i also like to hook my computer up to my hdmi port on my 42" lcd. Anyone know of something you can use to hook mutiable hdmi devices to a TV? Because i have a computer and a DVD player if i buy one and my cable box has hdmi on it also.

You can find some here.

not cheap, maybe shop around....

gs