Dear Friends, Here’s the long and the short of it. I want to be able to transfer some older family VHS & 8mm tapes to DVD. I also want to be able to copy some DVD movies to DVD. I gather from questions that I’ve asked that the best way to do that is to copy these mediums to my Hard Drive and then transfer them to a DVD disk. What I believe I need (and you can help me with this) is a DVD +- Burner, something that will enable me to connect my VCR to my computer, and software that will enable me to edit & enhance my VHS tapes and in some cases compress my DVD’s so they will fit on a regular DVD disk without loosing quality (and if you have suggestions on which disks work best, that too). I’m a poor working stiff so I want the highest quality for the lowest price. If you guys (and girls) have some ideas, some names, and or some prices (and maybe where to purchase) I’d really appreciate them. How to’s will help as well. Whatever you can give me I’ll take. If it helps, looking at my systems properties it says that I have a AMD Anthlon™ XP 1800+ (processor), 256 megs of RAM, I use Windows 98SE, and have about 33 gigs (of 60 gig) available on my Hard Drive, a 3D fx Voodoo Banshee Display Driver, and I don’t know what else. Anyone who has equipment similar to mine and has had success at doing the things I want to do please advise me as to what you used. Anything you can tell me will be appreciated. Thanks in advance you guys (and gals) have been most helpful in the past. Thanks & God Bless Uncle Bob
To Get VHS Tapes and Hi8 Tapes to your Hard drive so you can Create a DVD from them you will Need a Video Capture Device...A Capture device can be anything from a $20 TV Card to a $2000 Editing Card...Generally the More you spend the better the Device is and the Higher the Quality of the Captures.. You can spend $75 US on a Good Quality TV Card Like a MSI TV@nywere or a Leadtech Expert but the Quality will Only be Passible and you will need a Lot of Patience and Time to Figure out the Best Software to use and Hardware configureation and Method for createing the Video Files ,It is a very Hit and Miss sort of Thing with Lots of problems that allways pop up Like Quality issues and Audio and Video Sync problems ...Or you Can spend Like $150-$300 and Get a Good Analogue/Digital converter which will produce the best Quality and Have No Issues with audio and Video sync ...On the Low end of this Scale is something like the "Canopus ADVC-50/55" which are Under $200 and at the Higher end of the scale is the "Canopus ACEDVio" which are between $200 and $300 ,Both of these Devices basicly do the same thing, They Compress the Video and Audio signals into a High Quality DV AVI File useing a High Quality Hardware DV Encoder, the Files can then be easilly edited and encoded to Mpeg2 for Authoring to DVD.....One Problem you are Going to Have is that you should not use Win98 because Video Files are Very Big and Win98 has a 4gb File size Limitation, You will be useing Files Bigger than that Just for Burning to DVD....And you will need another Hard drive because you do not have a Lot of Space on the One you have and you should allways capture to a Seperate Drive from the Drive that your OS Is installed on..So basicly if you want any Sort of Quality Captures you are Going to need to spend Quite a Bit more Cash than you want to and this is even before you get into what software you will need...You can allways go cheap and get a TV Card and Capture to a Compressed Format like Mpeg2 that doesn"t need a Lot of Disk Space but to Capture Full resolution Mpeg2 you will probably need a faster CPU cuz a 1800+ is a Bit slow for full resolution Mpeg2 Capture..I had to upgrade from my old 1.7ghz to a 2.53ghz before I could capture Full resolution Mpeg2.....well good Luck
