Transfering vhs to dvd

[Ken M]

I have a lot of home movies on vhs that I want to transfer to dvd (from my
vcr to my pc)- what product would be best for this? I would prefer ATI, but
I would appreciate info about others for comparison.
I'm running Windows XP.

Thanks in advance-
Ken

 

[Henry]

I have a lot of home movies on vhs that I want to transfer to dvd (from my
vcr to my pc)- what product would be best for this? I would prefer ATI, but
I would appreciate info about others for comparison.
I'm running Windows XP.

Thanks in advance-
Ken

Any All in Wonder product has the audio/video inputs necessary to copy a
home VHS movie. I use the add in TV tuner card by ATI that also has the AV
inputs and that works just fine. Personally, I use Pinnacle Studio to make
the DVD menus and burn the DVD, but that's just a preference.

Henry

 

[johns]

I used Haupphauge WinTV pci card to do it.
Capturing sound was a little tricky, but I got it after
a world of trying stuff. Had to use patch cables from
vcr to sound card line in. Video went on composite
just fine. I think S3? input would have been better,
but I never figured it out, since I had another way.
My card is 5 years old, and came out for Win95.
DL'd WinXP drivers for it just recently, and it works
great. I also bought a mpg capture program so I
don't have to mess with AVI monsters 33 times
bigger for the same thing. Looks good.

johns

 

[Barry Watzman]

The best solution BY FAR, NOTHING ELSE IS EVEN CLOSE, is to get a
digital camcorder with analog "pass through" (most Sony Digital-8's
have this feature, except for some very low-end models; some other
digital camcorders have it as well). You feed the analog audio and
video (either S-Video or composite) into the camcorder and connect it to
your computer with a "firewire" digital port. The Camcorder does the
conversion. It has special, dedicated circuits to do this one function
and nothing else. They are HIGHLY optimized, and no other solution even
comes close.

Capture is done digitally from the perspective of the computer. Almost
all digital editing software can do the capture over a firewire port,
including Microsoft Windows Movie Maker, which comes with XP.

 

[Mauricio]

Depends whether you intend to watch them on a stand-alone DVD player or
on your computer only.

If former, it needs to adhere to DVD standard, files need to be
transcoded into MPEG2 and in .VOB file format, certain directory
structure needs to be preserved and .IFO files generated. There are
products that can capture in a native MPEG2 format, which saves in
transcoding time (which normally takes ages), such as Adaptec VideOh DVD
(+/-$200 last time I checked). I think the box also includes software
that creates the DVD automatically, so you don't need to worry about
file formats and directory structure. A word of note: if you get the
external unit, you would need an USB2 port on your computer, because of
high data transfer rate.

If playback on a stand-alone DVD player is not required, any analog
capture device will do. One could get an All-In-Wonder card, or a VIVO
version of GE Force, or an inexpensive no-name-brand TV tuner (going for
+/-$50) - most of them use the same capture hardware anyway. Please
note that in event of an analog capture device the resolution of your
video will probably be quarter of a full frame size (320x240 NTSC or
360x288 PAL), which is not much of a loss in your case, as such is the
VHS resolution anyway.
Another solution, providing you already have a FireWire (IEEE1394,
i-Link) port on your PC, would be to get an A/D converter, such as
Canopus ADVC series, which outputs digital video already compressed in
DV codec, in the same manner a digital camcorder would. The drawback of
this approach is large file size (around 3.5Mb per second) and
interlacing issues. There are ways around, but that is another long story.

 

[Steve P]

Any of the ATI AIW cards should be sufficient. I've got an AIW 7500 and it
works just fine. The faster ATI cards don't improve video capture, they
improve 3D "game" performance. It comes with software that allows you to
capture video. I don't have any experience with burning DVDs, but I do burn
video (mpeg2) to CDRW and can get about 50 minutes of broadcast quality
video on a standard CD. They can be read by a computer or any recent
stand-alone DVD player.

 

[Morgan Sales]

I have a lot of home movies on vhs that I want to transfer to dvd
(from my vcr to my pc)- what product would be best for this? I would
prefer ATI, but I would appreciate info about others for comparison.
I'm running Windows XP.

I use a Pinnacle Studio Deluxe Video Capture card alone with the Pinnacle
Studio software. It's probably not the cheapest solution but it work great
and is very easy to digitise and edit video.

Important piece of advise for when you start transferring DVDs though.
Always capture your video with the same bit rate that you intend to applied
when you compile the DVD. Otherwise it will take hours to render.