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Given a VHS player connected to a PC via a USB video capture, what I'm looking for is a way (in software) to constantly monitor that video input, and capture any "useful" sections to files whilst discarding the rest. For "useful" read anything with actual video and/or sound, rather than white noise, blank screen, silence, etc.

In an ideal world, once set up I would put a (previously rewound) tape into the player and hit play. The software would see the content start and begin recording to file. When the tape content ends and the VHS player outputs several seconds of either white noise or (more likely) a blank screen (probably black or blue) the recording is stopped and the file closed. The software would then watch for the next tape to be inserted and start again with a new file.

The object, of course, is to allow me to work through my tape collection, converting them all to files, without having to constantly stop/start the recordings manually and without storing lots of non-content.

Preference for Linux (Ubuntu) command-line tools but open to GUI (inc Windows) suggestions.

Everything I have seen tends towards manually starting the recording, and stopping it based on time, but the idea of splitting a video stream into files at blank screens seems like it ought to be possible.

Or if there are good reasons not to do something like this I'd love to know.

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I can think of two good reasons not to do it this way.

  1. Review time. You are going to have to review & edit/compile this anyway; the time to do it is not at transfer but afterwards - a non-realtime process in a video suite.
  2. Chance of error. If an automatic process fails, you'll have to go back & try again - complete waste of time, plus you are going to have to sit & watch it all as it streams in so you can check it worked.

This is the type of task to set going, then come back after it's done…
…which leads us straight back to 1).

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  • I don't disagree that there will be the need to review afterwards. Not having automation of the stop/start makes this worse, however, as it leaves me with much bigger files to review (which will mostly not contain any content), not to mention that I'll quickly run out of disk space.
    – Mark Rogers
    Commented Dec 23, 2022 at 22:58
  • The workflow I had in mind was: write the current date/time on the tape label, then insert the tape and press play. Then walk away. Some hours later (could be overnight) observe that the tape is no longer playing, so eject it and insert the next one, after writing the current time on it. Later, review those files, making sure the content recorded matches the expected length of the tape it came from and is watchable. Scan through it, and once happy discard the tape. (Most of the tapes will not contain anything worth keeping but I can quickly establish that when reviewing the files.)
    – Mark Rogers
    Commented Dec 23, 2022 at 23:04
  • I still think time-based recording is the way to go. Otherwise you're going to have to check each tape against what was auto-recorded, at least on a partial basis, until you learn whether or not you can trust it. I also think that, though current computer tech would be well up to the task, the chances of anyone bothering to code it for such a small market are pretty remote.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Dec 24, 2022 at 10:24

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