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Transferring VHS to DVD ??? 1

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pcquest23

MIS
Joined
Jul 10, 2003
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US
Hi,

Can anyone tell me what I need to do (hardware /software)with my pc in order to use my PC to transfer my old VHS tapes to DVD. Thanks!

Regards,
Sam
 
Try a search at they wrote an article on this you can buy a copy from them. Also let us know what you have already in the way of equipment. If you are looking at putting a system together to do this it just may be cheaper to send it out and have it done.
 

You need to look in the capture and author sections of this page.

__________________________________________________

~cdogg
[tab]"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources"
[tab][tab]- A. Einstein
 
:)
what kind of budget is what it boils down to.

I am having fantastic restults with the Matrox RT.x100, adobe premiere, and sonic dvdit!, but since it's $1000 for the bundle(and you need a blazing machine), not many choose that path. It has a little brother (the rt.x10) for around $500.
I'm pulling master tapes in a tv station and putting then on dvd's, and am very satisfied with the results.
I also need to be able to stream some video files in both realmedia and windows media formats.(it puts out quicktime and divx as well)
Fortunatly, since you are only pulling off of VHS, you could probably get away with a much less expensive card due to the resolution of the VHS source...

You'll need:

1. a fairly fast computer and a LOT of hard drive space. Avoid dropped frames and get a dedicated drive w/ an 8mb cache. I chose a western edition special edition 120gb and it is plenty fast and not that expensive.

2. an analog (rca or s-video inputs) capture card (i had poor results with an ati all-in-wonder 7500), i'd steer clear of USB capture devices as well. look around at pinnacle or canopus for your price range.
(or perhaps using an analog converter and a firewire capture card would suit you better)

3.authoring software - this creates a menu structure that allows the video to play an a set-top dvd player. Lets you create menus with buttons and chapter points. Some form of this usually comes with the capture card, so make sure yours does!

4. a dvd -r burner and dvd -r media. DVD+r media is not as compatible with most set top players. They will play on most players made in the last 6-8 months, but I would do -r just in case you distribute them to any friends or relatives that aren't on the bleeding edge. This is fairly important to remember, otherwise the dvd will only work on your PC.

5. Lots of patience while you get the hang of all the new software and tweaking things.
 
Thanks to everyone, especially CreamCake for your help.
 
Good advice CreamCake!

I've been reading a lot about the rt.x100 and rt.x10. Both are definitely good cards that allow you to edit video in realtime. To me, that's the main advantage.


pcquest23,
If you decide to buy a budget video card to capture analog video from your VCR player, I strongly recommend going with ATI over Nvidia if those are your choices. The ATI RAGE THEATRE chip is much more advanced and provides higher quality than the capture components on many budget Nvidia cards. In the newer ATI 8500/9700 ALL-In-Wonder cards, the RAGE THEATRE chip has seen some vast improvements and the quality has only gotten better.

It's up to you, but if your main concern is just transferring VHS to DVD and not doing any serious, professional editing (like adding special effects), then the budget route is probably the one you want to take. I wouldn't worry about having Adobe Premiere or Matrox rt.X cards.

__________________________________________________

~cdogg
[tab]"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources"
[tab][tab]- A. Einstein
 
I bet they make a unit to go from vhs to dvd without a computer. I saw a DVD player the other day that could read mp3,mwa,jpeg,Kodak picture disks,MPEG-2,DVD MOVIES, Dolby 6.1, ETC. I think it was a samsung. I looked at it and I said that looks great.

Video capture is another idea. What a great excuse to purchase a new video card and a new dvd -RW. An ATI All-in-wonder card sounds great.

They also make software to go from VHS/DVD to MPEG-2 which may come with some video cards. Going straight from digital DVD to MPEG-2 without using a video card is possible. It is a little controversial for some of this copyright protectionists. I think it would be nice for less than 1/2 hour.

POWER DVD is a software title I remember for playing DVD's on the computer. I dont know if they make recording software or not.

If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.
 
They do make set-top dvd recorders, but you will be unable to edit the final video at all.It's a matter of hooking your vhs output to the dvd input and pressing "record".
The convienience with capture is that you can edit and cut out the boring stuff. (and they were still somewhere between $800-$1200 last time I looked @ standalone recorders)
Plextor makes a usb 2.0 device that converts analog video to either mpeg-1, mpeg-2 , or mpeg-4, but even that requires a p3-800.
I'd go with a PCI capture device over usb anyday, but I've also gotten to be a video snob with my ginchy toys at work.
I've read too many bad reviews on USB capture, especially for stuff like dazzle.

Mpeg2 will be the format that goes on the DVD for your reference.

 
The argument against using USB capture devices is pretty strong when you're talking about USB 1.1. Back in the day, they were pretty sad and you had very little control over the type of format you could capture in (frame and bitrates were pre-determined).

I don't know if they've improved, but USB certainly has. With USB 2.0, the bandwidth is practically 40 times greater than its USB 1.1 sibling. One can only hope that the USB capture devices and accompanying software have improved as well. The latter is something I'm not sure of.

However, PCI is still going to beat out firewire and USB 2.0. PCI maxes out at 132MB/s and averages a sustained transfer rate of 100MB/s. Of course, the speed depends on the PCI load (how many devices are currently connected to it and are in use). At 100MB/s, that's roughly twice as fast as USB 2.0.

Just some food for thought...

__________________________________________________

~cdogg
[tab]"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources"
[tab][tab]- A. Einstein
 
At this stage in recordable DVD development, it's worth considering purchasing a recorder that will do both + and - R/RW. We do not yet know which will emerge as the winning format, and it is true that only -R will work on a lot of existing consumer DVD players (although my money's on DVD+R/RW as the emerging victor).

New players are coming out that can cope with +R and even DVD RAM. Consumer DVD recorders are also available, although most use -R (the older technology).

I posted a while back discussing the merits of these 3 formats, so won't enter into discussion here.

The best consumer DVD players not only do MP3, VCD et al, but also DivX - but these are few and far between (as I write...). Sony's SACD looks to me like a bit of a dead duck - ie not a reason to buy a particular DVD player. Although the quality is superior to regular CD, DVD audio will (fairly obviously) soon surpass it. A better reason to buy any consumer model is Component support - even if you don't currently plan to use it as an interconnect method. In time you will, as other devices move to this high quality connectivity (better than SCART or S-Video).

The point I'm making is that if you are on the verge of buying a DVD recorder or player, think carefully before you part with cash - even if they are cheaper now. There's too many "must-have" features that may prove "mustn't haves" in the very near future.

I do not (yet) own a - or + R recorder, but I do have a DVD RAM recorder, FWIW. My consumer player is a Cambridge Audio CD55, which is of superlative quality - but doesn't do DIV/X. Fortunately it was cheap :-)

To record VHS, I have a Haupauge WinTV card, which takes the S-Video output directly from my Sony VHS recorder. It has a normal video in as well, and I've successfully used a SCART conversion lead to connect non-Sony machines to my PC. The packaged recorder software records direct to AVI, and to make movie discs, I simply use Nero to burn VCDs. The quality is nowhere near that of DVD - but is useable - and this solution is very cheap (less than £50/$75 for the Haupauge card).

InterVideo DVD Copy is nice, cheap software that allows basic editing as well as copying - and thus the transfer from VHS to a DVD encodable format. It's also DivX compliant :-)

Hope this helps

 
i ending up buying a stand alone dvdr player £400!
this is link to the tv and video and satelite reciever
from the vcr i can copy stuff straight to dvd
but if you have poor quality video images then pc option better as you can edit and manipulate the images!
 
My friend has been using:


And he says it works well. He has been making some VCD and SVCD CD's pretty cheaply for the family holiday tapes and such.

I have no personal experience with them myself, only what he told me.

Also, I was the one that recommended this product to him.

Cheers!
 
If you buy one of those DVD burners / players that attach toyour stereo instead of the computer... its easy.

(Why do people watch DVD on the computers any way?)
 

Kjonnnn

Well, I can't speak for other people, but with a 21" monitor and 6.1 surround sound and speaker set around my computer it's far more enjoyable than watching it on my TV! :)

Cheers!

 
Kjonnnn,
With the right equipment on your PC, you can watch DVD's either there or on your standalone DVD player connected to your TV.

__________________________________________________

~cdogg
[tab]"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources"
[tab][tab]- A. Einstein
 
I forgot Hauppage was also supposed to have some decent capture cards that worked with various freeware capture/editing programs.
ATI was on none of the freeware capture compatibility lists, and though I've heard they are the fastest cards out right now, I've been IT long enough to develop a stack of useless all-in-wonder cards (D@*& those drivers!). The ATI pci capture-only card has been good enough quality-wise for me @ home until I got stuck with being video-encoder boy at work recently (which is when I changed into a video snob I suppose). The (ati) best looking video capture formats are a pain in the butt to edit, and that one or 2 occcasional dropped frames when capturing long TV programs was reason enough to get a MSI geforce4 TI4800 w/128ddr ram and vivo (video-in/video-out). I'll just use the VCR as a tuner.
I still have not even tested the capture quality of my card (now that I can just carry stuff in to work to encode on real equipment!), even though it's been in the home system for months now, so I can give no review of it's capture abilities.
I agree w/ cdogg to stay away from budget nvidea (personal cinema?) capture cards though (anything MX series), but if I was to get another "budget" TV tuner/capture card, I think I would go with the Matrox G450 etv. I imagine it's fast enough to play most games, and though not a screaming card, the resolution of the capture is supposedly excellent.

I'd steer clear of adobe premiere as well. It's great and a very powerful piece of software...if you have a week or 2 to learn just that piece of software and have a few in-house AVID video editors to ask questions to (like me).
Premiere is used to edit the videos and I don't know if you intend on simply doing direct dubs, or want to chop up the video a bit. I guess it depends what's on the tape. There are several types of editing programs - I use virtualdub (freeware) at home for simple editing, and the capture specific cards (like pinnacle) come with editing software anyway. I think even ATI capture cards come with Ulead VideoStudio these days, but don't quote me on that.

Movie dubs? -> you shouldn't need editing software.
Family movies -> you definitely will want to edit these
-> think for the future.. TV capture.. and chopping out commercials! then on the dvd it goes!

Give this site a shot to learn more on editing/capture.
It's not god's own site.. but can give you some quick info.

 
i want to transfer my vhs recordings to my pc hard drive.
i have a nvidia capture card installed.I just need to know how to transfer from vhs video to my pc hard drive

Thanks Brian,,,,,,
 
Roxio (Easy CD Creator) has this feature.

Newposter
"Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment."
 
I don't think the Easy CD package has anything to help with "capture". Usually a utility will come with your video card. At least I know ATI cards do. For Nvidia, you might want to double-check the contents of the CD that came with your card or jump out to their website.

There are also loads of freeware/shareware you can find out at

~cdogg
[tab]"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources"
[tab][tab]- A. Einstein
 
Power DVD has a Producer version that they claim can do DVD editing. Look for Power DVD on the Internet.

If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.
 
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