vhs to dvd

[darby]

hi
i want to purchase a device so that i can copy my videos to dvd on the pc.
there seems to be a number of products available
ie dazzle,pinnacle,adaptec etc

can any one recommend one

thanks

[kimomakano]

A year ago I could have told you, now there are so many options available it gets confusing.
Do you want to be able to edit the videos or just copy them directly to a dvd as is?

[darby]

both ?

[rsquirell]

I use the Dazzle (now Pinnacle) DVC-150 external hardware because my powerbox is a notebook, and I can't open it up. There are a number of internal cards available that do a fine job , too. Generally the high end stuff gives better clarity (higher resolution) and normally costs around $200. They are also coming out with new lines of DVDRecorders nowadays.

[mattgrant]

I currently use a MiniDV camcorder with analogue inputs as a transcoder.

As rsquirell says, there are standalone DVD recorders available at good prices these days. You can get the Panasonic DMR-E50 for £235 these days.

If it's pre-recorded VHS copies you are trying to encode, then you may need a TBC to replace the sync pulse and remove any Macrovision from the tape. You can get video stabalisers for approx £60.

[atifsh]

Re: vhs to dvd

Originally posted by darby
hi
i want to purchase a device so that i can copy my videos to dvd on the pc.
there seems to be a number of products available
ie dazzle,pinnacle,adaptec etc

can any one recommend one

thanks

i got a snazzi III AV.DV hardware encoder, and im pretty happy.

other option would be

Pinnacle Studio AV/DV version 8 my friend got it and hes happy too


both these have analog aswell digital inputs,
if u just need analog capture then get just analog capture card.........cheaper option

[sfheath]

beware of cheap
I tried my Hauppauge Win TV Go card at capture and the frame dropout was utterly unnacceptable, this on a 2.5GHz P4 with 512MRAM.
When I do get around to backing up my tapes I think I shall go for the PVR 350 to get encoder and decoder in hardware.

[Max Headroom]

Dazzle DVC2

Hi.
I use a Dazzle Digital-Video-Creator II (DVC2) PCI & External box. It works quite well and doesn't produce any dropped frames... IF YOU HAVE A GOOD SOURCE !
The common problem still remains: If your tape is in a quite bad shape after all the years, you will get a lot of missing syncronisation signals. Maybe you won't even bother about some "white lines" crossing your screen every now and then, but the encoder itself requires a stable Time-Base signal from the VCR. If it's missing, the encoder (DVC2 or any other capture device AFAIK) will freeze the frame and continue to capture as soon as it synchronizes again with a correct TimeBase-signal. If you want to capture those missing frames (mostly some seconds!) you need to generate a correct TimeBase-signal and join it with the video. This is done with an external TBC (TimeBase-Corrector), and this little box is still quite expensive
AFAIK a very good (& "cheap") solution is the DataVideo "T-1000" (www.datavideo-tek-com) box. There's a cheaper PCI-version, but I prefer an external box (when I finish saving the money for it )

You have two possibilities to convert VHS to DVDs.
1. capture directly with an MPEG2-capture device.
2. capture first to harddisc and render the movie to MPEG2

The first one is the fastest one ... and the worse, too. You won't get any tweaks or enhancements, only a speed-up bonus compared to the second solution. If you capture to harddisc first (as High Bitrate MPEG2 or DV-compliant) you can lateron use tools like AVIsynth and it's filters to enhance the picture quality quite a lot. But you need some patience, because the whole movie must be depacked on-the-fly and the filters applied to it will also need quite a lot of processor-power. The output stream can be sent to quality-encoders like TMPEG Encoder or (for rich users) Cinemacraft Encoder as two-pass stream. It will need quite a lot of time but the result will surely become more "DVD-like" than a pure VHS capture

-=MAX HEADROOM=-

[atifsh]

Originally posted by sfheath
beware of cheap
I tried my Hauppauge Win TV Go card at capture and the frame dropout was utterly unnacceptable, this on a 2.5GHz P4 with 512MRAM.

let me clearout when i say cheap that means cheaper analog models that still do hardware encoding.
both pinnacle and snazzi make such models.
price difference b/w the 2 (analog+digital) and (just analog) is almost double.

[rsquirell]

You can capture DV straight through the firewire from a DV camera, and if you use ULead VideoStudio7 or Pinnacle Studio8 software for capture the DV will be captured in MPEG2 (rather than AVI). The DVC-150 is an external MPEG2 device connected to the USB2 port capturing analog (VHS) at high resolution (720X480) at a high bitrate (up to 8000kbps)(since you are capturing VHS you are limited to its 356X240 resolution...but the capture looks as good as the tape.) I've heard great things about the old DVC2...but I believe it's connected through the parallel port...and, as such, it isn't supported by XP.

[Max Headroom]

Originally posted by rsquirell
The DVC-150 is an external MPEG2 device connected to the USB2 port (..)

A friend of mine wanted to buy such an USB-device, too but he switched over to another model because he only has USB 1.0
Nowadays the USB2-devices also produce good quality. But limited to USB 1.0 you will only get VCD-quality, and that's really not that what I prefer.

I've heard great things about the old DVC2...but I believe it's connected through the parallel port...and, as such, it isn't supported by XP.

The DVC2 consits of a PCI-card with an printer-port looking connection and an external box where I can plug-in analog sources via S-VHS or chinch cables. But it's not somewhere comparable with the parallel port itself. Only the plug looks so, but I'm quite sure that eg. the old IOMega-Drives don't use C-Cube CoDec-processors. Unfortunately I don't own a digital camera to shoot a picture of the card
My system runs unter Windows 2000 Professional and it's quite stable. The drivers to the capture device are somewhat different to the high-end devices because the are bundled to the Dazzle capture program and are not usable with other capture-tools (Premiere, VDub, ...) But some coders are quite intelligent to use implement own capture-tools. TWNH and Bugsy are two really great tools supporting timer-records and a lot of configurations (GOP-selection,bitrate and quality, presets,...). But if someone needs to use different programms, he should look over to another device because the DVC2 is of course a bit outdated and the support is frozen down to zero. AFAIK only fans are continuing to contribute tools and tweaks for it

Ciao-Ciao...
-=MAX HEADROOM=-

[kimomakano]

Wow, seems like you have gotten lots of good feedback. I noticed a good article in our local paper last night that dealt with exactly this topic. Here is the link: http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/ar.../bz/bz14a.html

Personally I use an old ATI All-In-Wonder analog capture card. My burner is an HP DVD200. I originally began doing this to convert old home videos to DVD for storage. The card is old but works fine. What does make a difference (for me) is the software.

To capture the video to my hard drive I use VirtualDub.

To convert to digitial I use TMPGEnc.

To make movies (ie, chapters, menus, etc) I use ULead DVD Workshop.

To burn to disc I use NERO.

Basically you need to listen to what people say and go with what is appropriate for what you are going to do. Good luck!!

[GeneralLeoFF]

yea the age of the card generaly dosnt mean a damn thing when it comes to analog tv tuner/capture cards. as long as theres good driver support then dirt old capture card will still give good results that will be on par with the latest hotest card.

They are based on technology that has remaned for the most part un changed sence the mid 1930's after all

[kimomakano]

When I first started doing this I was using the software that came with the card and thought that was the best that I could do.

Then after reading through posts in this forum I became convinced to "try" different capture software (I didn't know I could do that at the time - super naive).

Anyway, after I switched to VirtualDub it make the captured video much, much better. It is virtually the same as the source.

There may be other programs out there that do better, but for what I do I am satisfied. I strongly recommend people to investigate the options, you will be glad you did.

Oh, and don't forget to search and read former posts. There is a lot of good information here.

[rsquirell]

You can't capture better than your source, kimo...so if that's what you're getting stick with it.