I'm saving up my money for so that I can start to convert vhs tapes to dvds. I have been researching methods on how to convert vhs to dvds. I can't afford a $150-200 video capture card. (Are they the best though? Maybe you can recommend a lower cost card that works well and tell me what you use.) I found a usb capture card on amazon.com that is rated ok. Here is the link http://www.amazon.com/Diamond-VC500-Touch-Capture-Device/dp/B000VM60I8/ref=dp_cp_ob_sw_title_2. Tell me what you think. I also found another capping system here. http://www.amazon.com/VHS-To-DVD-4-0-Plus/dp/B0024M2T24/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1294505196&sr=8-6 Tell me what you think about that one too. I also heard that one hour of footage can take up ]12-14 gigs of space! My question is what do you use to make it 700 mb or so for about a 2 hour file as I have seen? And what is the best software to use for capturing? I saw some on this website here. http://video-editing-software-review.toptenreviews.com As you can see I'm a beginner and know very little. Please be as thorough as you can in the recommendations you provide. Give step by step info and weblinks with your information. YOu can treat me like a total newbie because essentially that's what I am. Well thanks for any help you can provide on this. If you can't provide any info, please recommend some people who can. PS Please reply asap if you can. Thanks for your patience. PPS Please do not recommend a DVD VHS recorder for this. I am not interested in that. I want to get the tapes directly to my computer and edit them. Thanks
Go with dazzle dvc (any device) cheap and very easy to use with there software. when converting it dosnt take much space either.
I have an old skool Hauppage capture card.. works a treat.. on linux.. no windoze drivers for it in the last 7 years tho..
Do you have a link to the card? What is the exact name and model number? And how do you compress the files that you rip? Have you used it y? Because I heard that ripped vhs video takes up gigs and gigs of space. Are you REALLY sure this dazzle dvc would work in terms of video/audio quality and compression?
Yes i have, i own a dvc 100 Use to use it back in halo 2 recording gameplay the files that it captures using instant dvd recorder are a very reasonable size.
Ok could you give me an example of what size your vids were? Like for instance if you made a vid that was 30 mins what was the size of it? That would help. And does it work iwth Win Vista or 7 64 bit? Thanks.
May I ask a couple questions? I'm looking for a new capture device, and read your post. I'm not real experienced either, but have had a little experience with the device I was already using. Would I be correct that what you actually want to do is remove 5 minutes of something else from your video, about every 1o minutes? If so, that's not technically editing the video, it's just snipping out a piece of it. Really editing it would be changing something about the video you leave in. I remember reading somewhere about a recommended software for doing that, and if you want I'll try to find it. But you keep mentioning 700MB as a target size. Is that because it's the size of a CD? So maybe what you are trying to do is make a VCD, not a DVD? That means maybe you DO need editing, because you'll need to alter the resulting video to make a VCD. You were asking about the size of the captured files. I just captured one hour of tv news, and it was a 2.4 Gig file. I recorded it as a DVD file, and at the highest quality my software allows in the capture options properties box- high, good, standard, long play, and extended play. You'll have roughly the same options, but they're sort of like using the different speeds on a VCR- squeezing more onto one tape reduces the quality. For what it's worth, I make DVDs, not VCDs, but by the time I'm done and converted to a DVD image file, one hour is usually over 3 Gigs, and 2 hours won't fit on one DVD, so I split it onto 2 DVDs. I could use the double layer ones, that hold twice as much, but they're pretty pricey, and I'm okay with changing the disc once during the show. Or you could use DVD SHRINK (software) to compress it just enough to fit. But if you're concerned about having room on your HD, you need to be aware that while you're doing all this, you need three times the space of the video: the original, the one in process of conversion, and the final version. If you're cramped, you might want to get an external Hard Drive to do it all on. So I'm wondering what you ended up doing, and how it's working, and what kinds of problems you might be having. I have an old Plextor capture unit, that worked fine for a long time, but I started having problems with the resulting videos- audio was out of sync with video. I solved that for awhile, but it started again, so I'm thinking about looking for a newer capture device. That's why I'm interested in your progress.
Beta No really there is no comparison I wouldn't bother converting VHS to DVD. The video will only be good as the original Waste of time unless you have family stuff to be viewed in the future. There is tons of conversion utilities. Jeff
Jeff, The NTSC of the VHS and Hi8 is the quality, not the DVD. If you are upgrading the output to BluRay it is still a matter of the player not the media. There are many conversion utilities but capturing the content from the tape is primary to a quality digital conversion.
I Sorry for my extremely late reply. I got an Honestecch vhs to dvd 5.0 capture device and the files are very large 3 or 4 gigs. When I was thinking of 700 mb I was thinking of the small 700 mb videos you see on the different sites that are movies and have been compressed to that size. I tested Golden videos vhs to dvd and then compressed the file with Handbrake and that made it slightly smaller. But to get the 700 mb rips you have to have dvd shrink or dvd decrypter & auto gk with the dvd files. I didn't know this until after I posted the thread. I have also found that it works to use a dvd recorder for home movies (ie non copywritten) and rip the disc with a dvd shrink and auto gk to get smaller avi like 700 mb for 2 hrs. Here are some tutorials on how to do it this way: Converting DVD movies into .avi using AutoGK http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/dv...sing_autogk.cfm How to create aXXo quality DvD Rips http://isohunt.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1...tart=0&sid= I hope this helps and again sorry for my late reply. I hadn't been watching the topic, but wanted to reply to your question.
