Conversion of VHS

[lj01]

I'm assuming this topic has been addressed before, but I wasn't able to get the right combo of keywords to locate the previous iterations so forgive me in advance for asking something that i'm certain has already been addressed.

I am in the process of converting a small number of VHS tapes to digital and then DVD. My equipment is a standard VCR, Roxio USB cables. In reading some of the material here, I was convinced to use virtualdub to capture. I was also convinced to use lagarith lossless codec.

My next step would be to use TMPGEnc DVD Author to author the DVD - but - I'm assuming there is a step in between to compress, correct? So, my one hour video is approx. 30 GB. So - what do I use to get it from 30 GB to approx 4 GB?

Second question - if I just hook up my VCR to the TV, I get sound out of both channels. however, in capturing - I only get one channel. I assume this might be due to the fact that the VHS was originally recorded in 1985 on a mono TV/VCR. However, since just hooking it up to the TV now produces 2 channels, is there any way I can get that to work in capturing? If not, I can just demux and fix it in Audacity or something but was hoping there might be a way to do it in the capture process.

Thanks for any and all help, these forums have been a great help to me over the years, I'm still a newbie but have always found the answers on these forums - thanks everybody!

[jman98]

I'm not particularly sold on the necessity of using virtualdub and lossless capturing for VHS tapes. But it's a religious issue with those who like it. Just understand that there are other ways to do this including capturing using "lossy" codecs, which I feel strongly are not bad if used at sufficiently high bit rates. Most of those who push for lossless capture are doing a lot of video processing via AviSynth and if you're not going to do that after you capture, there's not much to be gained by lossless capture in my opinion.

You might mention what your capture device is. By the way - don't worry about making a new post about this whole subject. It's no problem to ask about stuff that others have asked about before.

In terms of your audio, a quick way to handle this (yes, it's a known issue with older tapes) would be to go to Radio Shack and buy a "Y adapter" to convert one RCA audio input to 2 outputs. This can take your working channel that you can capture and split it into 2 outputs that you should be able to record. Yes, you can also demux and fix it in Audacity, but I use Cool Edit for this kind of thing and can't tell you how Audacity does it.

You will have to re-encode your lossless video capture to get it down to 4 GB. I would assume that TMPGENC DVD Author can re-encode video to produce DVD compatible video as output but I've never used it so I'm just guessing.

[lj01]

I'm not sure I even have a capture device. I have the standard VCR - then I have Roxio cables that are normally used with Roxio software - basically I just hook up the RCA cables to that, connect it through USB and then capture it. the "Y adapter" sounds like a good way to fix my audio issue - thanks!

[jagabo]

"Roxio cables" = capture device. They're not just "cables".

[lj01]

so on the audio issue...

i bought the "Y adapter" but doesn't seem to solve the problem. To note, my VCR has both left/right outputs and as mentioned, both channels play when the VCR is hooked in directly to the TV. However, no matter how I configure the output cables and such, I only get the right channel when I capture. Is this something that I need to configure within the driver or something like that? i'm using Windows XP on the computer that I am using this on.

Any help is much appreciated....thanks!