need help transfering vhs to dvd

[wharp]

Hi, I'm new here and I'm a total newbie when it comes to digital video of almost any kind. I know my way around a computer well, I've just never needed to learn anything about digital video. What I need to do (I'm not even sure if this is the right place to ask this) is transfer some old vhs tapes onto dvd. I also need to, at a later time, be able to record the dvd content back to vhs for distribution.

My system specs are as follows:

750 AMD TBird
256MB PC133
ECS K7S5A
ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder
Western Digital 80GB Special Edition

I know I need to buy a dvd writer, but other than that I'm clueless. The All-In-Wonder has inputs, so I'm assuming that I can get the video into the computer that way. Would I be better off buying another capture card or sticking with the All-In-Wonder? I was looking at the pinnacle line of products and thought some of them might work better, and they have software with them. I don't need to do any fancy editing (that I'm aware of), but I'm not sure what to look for in the way of software. Would Pinnacle be overkill or am I not even on the right track?

Also, will my system be able to handle this? I know working with video is pretty taxing on a system. Should I upgrade my CPU and RAM? I also thought of adding a second hard drive for both additional storage and performance.

Are there other considerations that I haven't even thought about? Please, any information/suggestions/tips would be helpful. Thanks!!

wesley

[njokica]

You can do that easy

First of all - you need a VHS casette player/videorecorder. Then, it must have video/audio out connectors, the best is if they are chinch type. You can use with no problem SCART connector too, but then you must have appropriate interconnection to your videocapturing card connectors.
Speed of your CPU is pretty good, but if you have time/money you can upgrade it - wont hurt a bit your system's performance.

You said you have to buy DVD writer.... well, actually, it is not quite true. You see, using some burning program such is NERO Burning rom, you can make VCD CDs with very high picture quality - it only depends of bitrate you set up when you make movie. VCD format uses MPEG1 standard for movies, and DVD uses MPEG2. Within NERO (and using crack) you can also use MPEG2 standard codec and make DVD quality movie as well. Not to mention that it would save some money for you .

Also, you have to have some video codec supported by your capturing card, because the best capturing (with 0 dropped frames) is done using codec made for certain video card. Later on you can make MPEG/AVI movies from it. So far, I'm not aware of videocapturing card which can capture in real time directly to MPEG format. If there is any, that must be with price of more than $300. If money is not problem for you..... then go ahead.

Good program for videocapturing/editing is VirtualDub - it's free, it's small (much more than Adobe Premiere 6, for example) and it's simple for use.

If you have any questions, feel free to drop me a line at:

njokica@yahoo.com

[njokica]

More on this subject....

You can find a very nice explanation here:

http://www.divx-digest.com/articles/vhs_capture.html

and here:

http://www.divx-digest.com/articles/vhs_capture2.html

about transferring VHS to digital movies (mpeg/avi).

[wharp]

Thanks for the info. I already knew about VCD, but the people I'm going to be doing this for want DVD (and for the most part, its their money).

How about the capture card? Is the ATI All-In-Wonder a decent card, or can I get something much better for a relatively small investment? I've had driver issues with the ATI in the past (and who hasn't) and don't want this to be the cause of some bad quality captures.

Thanks for the info and I'll take a look at the links this evening.

wes

[njokica]

Is the ATI All-In-Wonder a decent card?

Well, what to say?
It's best if you go to ATI site and look for your answer about all features your card has. I saw more than one All-in-wonder cards there, 8500, 8000... I don't know what model you have.

My friend is using Matrox RT2500, but that card costs about $1100... so - go for it if you have money. That card does real-time capturing of digital video, uses its own Matrox codec and works very well in Windows 2000.

The best guess is that you should have software developed by ATI for capturing video and I'm sure you must have something of that kind on CD you have with your card.

Good luck anyway

[ShuMO]

capture cards

I've had a little experience with 2 cards: the ATI AIW (radeon 7500) and the Hauppauge WinTV Go.

I prefer the functionality of my AIW, but honestly you cant beat the price of the Hauppage card which I believe was 99 or so dollars. I experienced 0 dropped frames in native capture on both, but the visual quality just 'felt' better with the Hauppage card. All for the low price of 78 bux (E-bay if you dare).

[setarip]

Your system will do just fine. Just hook your VCR up to your ATI card's audioin and video-in connectors with two audio cables and one video cable (audio-out and video-out on the VCR, of course).

A) If you don't have any capture software use (freeware)VirtualDub's built-in capture program to capture synchronized audio and video as .AVI file(s) - Set up video capture to use a lossless codec (e.g. HuffyUV). Set up audio capture for Uncompressed PCM (.WAV) format. This will yield a LARGE initial .AVI file - which you can subsequently SIGNIFICANTLY compress using VirtualDub (download and install a DivX video compression codec and the radium .MP3 audio compression codec) - and then dispose of the original uncompressed file

B) Use TMPGEnc (use its DVD "wizard"/template) to create the required separate video and audio files


C) Use a DVD authoring program (e.g. DVD Wise) to create your DVD(s)



Alternatively, you could purchase Phillip's standalone DVD burner. It connects directly to your VCR and contains software to automatically create DVDs from your videotape(s)...