Getting music files off old cassette tapes

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Hi,
I thought I had found a good way to convert about 30 of my old music cassette tapes, but I’m stumped.

My friend has a DVD burner and volunteered to hook it to his stereo to burn one of my cassettes to DVD. I think also he added some of his music to the DVD as well.

When I got the DVD, I’m finding two folders on it.Video_RM which contains files Video_RM.BUP, Video_RM.DAT, and Video_RM.IFO. The other folder is Video_TS which contains files Video_TS.BUP, Video_TS.IFO, Video_TS.VOB, VTS_01_0.BUP, VTS_01_0.IFO, and VTS_01_1.VOB.

From web searches I’m certain the VOB files are the ones that have the audio files in it, but one is only 60kb, which doesn’t seem large enough for a cassette full of music, and the other is around 775 mb. I tried sending Video_TS.VOB to zamzar.com for conversion to MP3 for my music player, but the conversion failed. Zamzar is looking into it. The other VOB file is too large for zamzar’s 100mb service.

Am I wasting my time trying to convert these old tapes inexpensively? Is there a better way other than buying the $300+ standalone “old time radio” lookalike burner unit that Target sells to convert tapes, records, etc? Thanks. Judy

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No you are not wasting your time, the subject has been well discussed and debated on this forum, under the heading of converting LP’s, the difference is that (in general terms) to convert an LP you need a pre-amp prior to connection to your Line-In, with cassettes you simply connect the tape output to your Line-In jack. Then record using programs like Audacity http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
The earlier debate on this forum covered the software requirements freebies and expensive.
A quick search of this forum located one of the abovementioned threads
http://lounge.windowssecrets.com/index.php?showtopic=766896&view=&hl=&fromsearch=1

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Hi, E-OGRADY.

I did a search but nothing came up. Didn’t search for LP, though. Thanks. It was interesting.

I think now that I’m going to have to bite the bullet and drag my heavy stereo system into the computer room and do the direct hookup you suggested. Been dying to try Audacity for a year now anyway. Thanks again. Judy

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Hi Judy
I’m over in England and I’m in the process of converting my old cassettes to CD. I bought a device called EzCAP USB Audio Capture which comes with the Audacity software. It’s about the size of an MP3 player and I plug one end into the headphone jack on an old portable radio/cassette player and the other end into a USB port on the PC. Then using Audacity I record the both sides as one long recording. Then I remove the tape hiss from the entire recording using Audacity. I then put bookmarks i.e. song titles at the appropriate points in the recording and remove any unwanted silence. Finally using the Export Multiple feature I create all the MP3 files. Then of course I burn the album to CD. I also use a freebie program called coverXP to print a front cover for each album. So far the results are excellent.
Hope that’s helpful.

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Hi, Graham.
Have you tried doing it starting and stopping after each song? Would that be less work than the one long recording? Thanks, Judy

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Hi Judy
Yes, for the first few cassettes I did start,stop start,stop etc but it’s much easier splitting up the full recording and also you only have to specify the Album Title, Artist Name, Year and Music Genre once at the start of the Export Multiple instead of for each track. Here’s a useful link to splitting recordings
My link
Also, doing it the track by track way, I got the noise of pressing the Play button on a couple of tracks.
Regards
Graham

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