Standalone DVD recorder VS Capture Cards...

[K_cin_az]

I their any drawbacks to just buying a standalong dvd recorder , recording tv to it a rw and then extracting the video to you computer to edit and such.

Ive recently purchased a AIW 8500dv and am extremely dissappointed with the product and its caputuring quality and ability. Was a waste of $150 thats for sure.

So if you want to avoid all the bs that goes along with using a capturing card is their any major drawbacks other than the cost for a standalone?

Can you capture vhs to dvd with a standalone dvd burner?

thansk[/quote]

[Oliver]

It depends on the kind of editing you plan on doing. For doing anything more complex than cutting and pasting, a standalone DVD recorder wouldn't be the best option. The reason is that the video will be recorded in the MPEG-2 format, which is more difficult to do any complex editing with. You would have to decompress the video to a more editable AVI file, but then you'd lose some quality in that process and recompressing again to MPEG-2 to write back to a recordable DVD. For simply converting VHS to DVD, I think they would work fine, but I can't say for sure as I personally haven't used one before.

One reason I went the PC route to convert my family VHS tapes to DVD is better flexibility to edit and clean up the video digitally, better quality MPEG-2 compression, and the ability to author custom menus.

[Rond66]

Also viewtopic.
Standalone DVD Recorders vs. Computer DVD Writers?
What are the Pros and Cons?

https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=152425&highlight=

[ImaWeTodd]

Oliver makes some good points:
- Computer Pros = Flexibility
- Computer Cons = Hassel

You could also get a ReplayTV. It captures mpeg2 and comes with the PVR stuff. People have not trouble pulling the video out of a Replay because they have Network cards. I believe they also have external inputs like s-video.

PS: I don't have one, be sometimes wish I bought one.