I have been reading a lot of the post on the board and I have become overwhelmed with the amount of technicality that goes into burning DVDs, so I thought I would ask one question at a time and I hope you can walk me from setting up capture to burning nice DVDs. Let me first explain what I have and what I am doing. I have a self constructed computer with intel D925XCv mobo. 3.2 gb intel cpu. ATI X800XL video card vo only. sony double layer dvd,cd player. My goal is to tape the 100's of VhS video's I have some home made and others store bought and convert to DVD to same space and get into the 21st century. my vcr is a dual go video vhs copier. I can copy vhs to vhs with it, however I want to use it to convert to DVD. Okay now since I am starting at the beginning I hope you experts and experienced videographers will be patient with me and walk me step by step from buying my capture device to burning my first DVD. question 1 and correct me if this is not where I should begin, is to buy a capture device for my computer. What would you recommend that would not be to costly and yet would give a quality equal to or better then what I had on the VhS? Thanks Gerry
Firstly you cannot improve quality, you can only hope to maintain it. There are various ways to get VHS onto a computer, and then to DVD. Here are the 3 basic ones, from best to worst, and most expensive to cheapest. Purchase a video digitizer device, and a good software encoder. These commonly hook up to the computer via firewire. The Canopus ADVC-110 or ADVC-300 are my recommendation. There are various types of software used to "capture" the video, and a standalone software mpeg-2 encoder must be used. Canopus also make one of the best encoders. These do not natively bypass macrovision (copy protection found on VHS tapes), although there is a hack for the 110. The learning curve is steep, and time consuming. Purchase an mpeg-2 hardware encoder TV Tuner/Capture card, hook the VCR into it, and record directly into DVD compliant mpeg-2 video. These can be internal PCI, or external USB. Hauppauge make great mpeg-2 encoder/tuner cards. The PVR-150 is the base model. They also make an equally good USB 2.0 device. These devices totally ignore macrovision, give near DVD quality, and the learning curve is a small hill, and the process is also much faster than the other two. Purchase a cheap capture card, and software encoder. These require serious computer processing power to work properly. They also require the steepest learning curve, and the most work/time to get a capture onto DVD.
Thanks for the response reboot. I just want to get what you wrote straight in my mind. Are you saying I will need a video stablizer, media encoder and canopus 110. I like the Canopus 110 I was checking one out at newegg. My windows xp has windows media encoder would that cover the encoder. what brand makes a good stablizer. I can see this is going to be quite a project at first, but I am willing to pay my dues and learn. thanks again.
You don't need a video stabilizer, it's just a thought, especially if you're a serious quality nut. Try without first, and see how the 110 works for you. Most people don't bother with a stab. Windows media encoder only encodes to .wmv, which is useless for just about everything. You'll need a good mpeg-2 encoder if you want to make DVD's. Canopus Procoder (Express) Mainconcept Tmpgenc CCE Basic Those 4 are the best ones. If you want an all-in-one tool, look here: http://members.shaw.ca/videojunk/all.htm
Hi Jim, You sound like the person I need to ask these questions of. My main interests are to capture video off our Satellite Dish signal and make dvds (primarily old movies from the 30's, 40's and 50's that aren't available on DVD) and to take video from our camcorder and burn it onto DVDS. In both cases I want to make decent menus and be able to edit the video (remove commercials etc). On my old computer, which recently died, I'd been using an ATI All-In-Wonder 9600 card and editing with Pinnacle Studio 9 Plus. This was a challenge, as the Pinnacle software is quite quirky and finicky, especially about audio sync and image breakup problems. Additionally their tech support is laughable. They do have a decent users forum although it seems all too often to be used to register complaints about Pinnacle rather than solutions. I did, however, get to the point, (right before my system died), where it worked pretty well for what I wanted to do. I recently bought a Windows XP Media Center edition PC, with an Athlon 64 x2 4200+ dual core proc, With 1G memory. It came with a Conexant Falcon II NTSC Video Capture Card in addition to an ATI Radeon x300se PCI Express card. The system works fine, except the Media Center program doesn't support AVI video capture and seems to be quite limited as to what I want to do. I installed my Pinnacle Studio 9 Plus software and it refuses to accept audio and video in the capture window. I looked around on their forums and found that, apparently, Pinnacle products can't use some video capture cards (including Hauppauge). So now I'm thinking maybe I should move up to a better DVD authoring program and possibly buy a better capture card for it. What do you recommend for the interests I've mentioned above? This is something I've really started to get into the last couple of years, and would be willing to spend a fair amount on in order to do it right (and hopefully more efficiently). The time I've wasted trying to get Pinnacle Studio to work propery has been very annoying and somewhat costly. I'm self employed and the hours spent on that program are hours I've not been able to spend on work or with my family. I'm looking at possibly trying Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5. Does this program do what I want? Is it overkill? Is it fairly easy to learn? If it would work with the card already in my system, that's about a $100 savings right there that could go toward the software cost. I'd appreciate any help. If you think I should post this as a new thred please let me know. PG
First, you don't need a big expensive program like Pinnacle, especially with it's problems. Adobe is no better. You can edit your captures in virtualdub (free), and author them with much cheaper, yet fully featured, software. Try DVDLab Pro or Tmpgenc DVD Author. Both have demo downloads. DVDLab is my preference, as it will do much more than TDA. I have guides too, if you need them. I would suggest you try some captures with your current card, and see if the quality is what you expect. If everything you cap is going to go onto DVD, get a Hauppauge PVR-150/250/500, or maybe the Theatrix 550 Pro. Get a good scheduling and recording app, such as GB-PVR (free). From there, you can decide on what software to use to edit and author with. The Hauppauge cards all come with some basic editing and authoring software (Ulead movie studio).
The 350 is prone to too many (driver/stability) problems, and it's decoder can only play mpeg-2, not avi (or any other format) so it's a waste of money. A 250 is the identical card, minus the decoder. The 150 is newer, cheaper, and the 500 is dual tuner, with FM, but no remote (same as the 150 MCE version). Use a good video card, with TV out (GF FX5200 minimum, or similar), and it will playback any video type you have, not just it's own mpeg-2 captures.
Hi Jim, Thanks for the very informative reply. I'll definitely try out the programs you mentioned, especially DVDlab Pro. I'm also interested in GB-PVR (free), for scheduling and recording. Will this allow me to set up my capture as I would with a VCR timer? That would be great as many of the really obscure films I want to catch are on at 3 or 4am. You mentioned some guides that you have if I need them. How can I let you know if I do? Is there a particular part of the forum you regualarly check out? Thanks again for the help! I'm very excited to finally be on the track of some real solutions. pg
GB-PVR is much more than just a scheduler app. It's a full PVR program. Download it and try it out. Installation instructions are on the website (look for quickstart guide). Further help (should you need it) is in the forums. It includes a free subscription to labs.zap2it TV guide service, which integrates with the program automatically. This is the meat of the app. You browse the guide, select what you want to record, and then schedule it (all done with about 3 mouse or remote button clicks). You can schedule daily, weekly, same timeslot, different channels, by name, genre, subtitle, and search for any show as well. It's much more intuitive than any old VCR, and easier to use than Tivo. If you need a guide for DVDLab, start here: http://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=220092
Hi I too wish to transfer VHS to DVD. I thought I would try to aquire a VHS player that has a s-video output then simply run that in to my Panasonic (DMR-E85H) DVD recorder. Then I started reading what you guys do and now I'm not so sure about my plans or more importainly if my idea is only going to yeild a poor DVD copy. Rick
