45

[inherindian]

33

[gshelley61]

How many VHS movies are you talking about? For what you have already spent, you probably could have simply bought many of them on DVD (pre-owned DVD's are especially cheap).

You can't bypass MV protection with a combo VHS/DVD unit. You have to use a separate VCR and DVD recorder setup with a video "clarifier", "enhancer", "stabilizer" or full frame digital Time Base Corrector in between.

In any case, VHS to DVD using a DVD recorder is definitely the fastest and most hassle free way to get it done.

[inherindian]

12

[redwudz]

Not sure about the 'sex ed' metaphor.

The ADVC should give you the best quality. The downside is it uses a lot of hard drive space, about 13GB/hour. Figure at least three times that for editing/encoding But DV is one of the best editing formats out there. Each frame is a keyframe, so you can cut anywhere you want and get frame accurate cuts. A highly compressed format like Xvid/Divx has the keyframes spaced about 300 frames apart. At ~29fps, you can see the problem. MPEG is a little better. If you are seeing pixelation, you have a problem somewhere. It also has the advantage of the audio sync being locked to the video, so no sync problems.

But the most important device is the VHS deck. And a TBC will help stabilize the signal quite a bit. I definitely wouldn't recommend a combo unit as there is usually no way to get around Macrovision protection with them. And if the VHS side fails first, it's fairly useless.

And remember if you do have any Mac specific questions, our Mac Forum is a good place to check out.

[gshelley61]

1,000 tapes - well, that's quite a job then.

I like DVD recorders with built in hard drives best. You record to the unit's HDD first, do any editing, chapter and menu creation you want to, then burn to a final DVD-R.

You'll also need a decent VCR (maybe a couple of them) to play back all those tapes with. High quality VCR's are no longer being built, so older units in good working order are your best bet. I'd suggest any of the JVC S-VHS units that have the DigiPure TBC/DNR feature.

If you do a search of this site you'll find tons of specific info about this subject.

[inherindian]

qu

[usually_quiet]

A couple of examples of video stabilizers that people here have recommended are: http://www.checkhere22.com/stabilizer/ and http://www.xdimax.com/grex/grex.html

TBCs prevent dropped frames, correct timing errors and eliminate wavy lines in the video. This thread might be of interest to you https://www.videohelp.com/forum/archive/help-using-tbc-t355706.html

You asked about using DL media with a DVD recorder. According to reports I have read here, they don't handle recording to DL media very well. For one thing, the layer break should be hidden in a spot where it won't be as easy to see, like a scene change, not placed at random in the middle of a scene.

It would be helpful if you could use your computer to put longer movies on DL media to get a better quality result. ImgBurn, a DVD burning ap for Windows or Vista allows one to position the layer break for DL media, but I don't know how well it works on a Mac using Boot Camp, etc. or if Toast can do the same.

Assuming you don't get an HDD DVD recorder, have you considered getting rewitiable media for this project? If you get a good result, it can be always copied onto DVD-R. Otherwise, it can be erased and re-used.

[redwudz]

Wikipedia usually has a good explanation of terms like 'TBC': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Base_Corrector