Which format is best to capture and edit from DVD's in Sony Vegas

[fuzzblaster]

I'm transferring S vhs and vhs to DVD's and then planning to play the DVD's into a Canopus AV110 for capture into Sony Vegas so I can edit or store the footage. What format would the AV110 put out and which format settings should I use in Sony Vegas.
Can I edit in the format that I capture the video in or do I need to convert it(rather not convert it)

also

When I am playing an S VHS tape into my toshiba RD xs52 stand alone deck which setting should I record in, the SP more (two hours of footage on 1 DVD) or the highest resolution setting (1 hour of footage on a DVD). If I record in the SP mode will I be losing some resolution or is that more than enough to capture S vhs video in a loss-less fashion.

Does the same go with regular VHS, can I make a DVD in the 2 hour SP mode without losing quality, or do I also need the one hour mode(highest resolution) to keep the video looking as good as possible.

or

should I use the one hour mode (highest res) for SVHS

and the SP (two hour mode) for vhs

or SP for both, or high res (one hour mode) for both

Thanks for any help, I have a lot of tapes to work on!

[olyteddy]

I'm transferring S vhs and vhs to DVD's and then planning to play the DVD's into a Canopus AV110 for capture

Bad idea. I'd either capture the tapes directly using the Canopus or if you want to use the standalone DVD recorder, rip the DVDs into the computer rather than running them through the Digital -> Analog -> Digital process. Use DVD R/W so you can recycle the disks and use the highest quality on the DVD recorder for best results.

[CogoSWSDS]

Between the two options given by olyteddy, I'd go for capturing the VHS/S-VHS into the canopus rather than sending it into a DVD recorder. The software encoders available for PCs are usually better quality than the hardware encoders found in DVD recorders. Plus you can do multi-pass encodes in software which is not possible for hardware encoders to do. The process may take a bit longer but you will get better quality out of it.

Having said that, *some* DVD recorders have what is called a "Line TBC" which can improve the video quality somewhat, if you use the recorder between the VCR and the canopus. Feed the output of the VCR into the DVD recorder, then feed the output of the recorder into the canopus, without recording to disk.

[pantalanaga11]

As the previous posts mentioned, you shouldn't do it this way.

Capture directly from the vcr using the canopus box. This will spit out dv video using the canopus hq codec whic is an excellent format for further editing. When you are all done, export to mpeg 2 using a bitrate appropriate for the length of the movie (I tend to not go over 2 hours for single layer dvds)

As for some of your other questions, the sp, lp, etc speeds control the quality of *recording* on your vcr, not playback. The tapes are what they are and changing the tape speed settings will not improve the quality.

Dvd recorders should never be used for a vhs to dvd project. The mpeg2 codecs cannot be tuned and the resulting video is stuck in mpeg2 which makes further editing very difficult (and you'll end up lossy compressing the video a second time... the resulting video will look worse than the vhs!).

Alternatively, you could have it professionally done... www.pickemupproductions.com

Good luck!