Connecting 2 VCRs Together

Video Transcript

"Hey, it's Rokosz, Your Digital Lifestyle Expert here and I'm going to show you how to hook two VCRs together. Well, you want to make a copy, you want to make a dub? You've got to have two VCRs. We've got an older VCR over here and then a newer VCR-DVD burning combo beneath it. So let me show you, how I'm going to hook those together. Basically any time you're wiring a piece of equipment in series, the general rule is, out to in. Basically we want to go out from our player and into our recorder. Before non-linear and computer editors, this was roughly how things got cut. You're basically recording from one deck to the other. And then there was some kind of control system to make sense of it, so you can control both of them. But if you're making a simple dub, you want to record one VHS tape to the other. Here is how you do it. Now, our newer VCR being specially for demonstration purposes, if you pull down this little front panel, ah, ha! We've got some inputs here. Now if you're going to do it for a while, you can get both units to face each other and you can wire them in through the back. But the newer models for dubbing and cameras and different things, thank goodness, have started to put inputs into the front of the units. This is great for demonstration purposes. And let me show you what we're going to do. First you have to decide, which cables you want to connect with. Now this being an older unit, has the RCA cables that you connect it to. You might also find ones that have the super video and the really newer ones, HDMI. But you're not going to find that with the VCRs because it's a digital input. But be aware that the connector's out there. So what we're going to do is, get a dubbing cable. Now this is going to have our video and two audio RCA connectors here and we're going to hook them up. Now the older version is so old, like most VCRs, that it actually has a monaural or just a mono output. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to take our yellow connector here and put it into the video out, the white into the audio out. And then here, we're going to repeat the process because the front of the unit, by nature is going to be in. It's ready to take in things and record. And the only reason, there's nothing special about the different colors. Except, they just let you know, what you got to connect it to, on the other end. So we're going to follow the same convention here and put in the yellow for video and the white on the audio. Now there is something that you can do, which is go down to Radio Shack or another Big Box electronic store, and get a Y-Splitter. And that will allow this to be hooked up into here and sort of convert it into a stereo signal. But it's monaural by nature and if that's what you're outputting, then that's what you're putting into here. So at this point we're ready to play. You have the other VCRs hooked up to your monitor. You queue your player up to where you want it to begin and where you want to record on your source tape. And you push play and record, and you're ready to go. It's just that easy, remember out to in, out to in and that's how you can hook up two VCRs together in series. I'm Rokosz, Your Digital Lifestyle Expert saying, stream you later."