I can’t believe it took a whole month of trial and error just to find the right hardware… There’s also an audio cassette player and a VCR incoming. Meanwhile:
The piece that actually does the analog to digital conversion: a composite video to HDMI adapter and converter. The SCART head in the back can take RCA or S-video contacts. The weakest link in the whole setup, because a professional person would probably use an expensive expansion card inside their computer or the likes…
The capture card. It takes digital video and/or audio signals through an HDMI connection and sends it to the computers via USB-C. Perhaps the second weakest link, since - again - a pro would probably do the conversion with a fancy PCIe card.
My beloved TASCAM. The only piece that I already had in my possession. Instead of letting the above capture card capture the analog audio, I let this do that. Do read up on TASCAM! They have a pretty long and reputable history within audio.
This little handheld video camera will playback Mini DV cassettes. I have already captured two of them successfully. Oh boi, do I love the second hand market.
Yay for converting video and audio to digital!
[A project for another year: converting slides, negatives, and family photos to digital. It’s a long process!]
Heh, I’ve already started that project too. Sometimes I meet up with mom, sit down with her, I bring my laptop and Canon scanner (LiDE 400), and I let her tell about the photographs that we scan and save. Give the filenames some representative name and date. 😊