Transfer of old TV series on VHS into S/VCD for use on DVD-R

[fender1]

Currently, the collection that I want to transfer is still on VHS only. In your opinion is it best to
A) Convert VHS to VCD, then VCD onto DVD or
B) Convert directly from VHS to DVD
Keeping in mind that my collection stems 175 episodes totaling about 300 hours of playback time, and that quality is not my biggest concern, speed of conversion is.

If you believe A is the best method, can you suggest a way to get my VHS episdoes into VCD? I have read many different ways, but cannot figure out the easiest/fastest/most compatible. Options I've heard include canopus ADVC-100, Dazle Hollywood, and WINTV PVR. Cost is not much of an issue if it will save me a lot of time in converting these 300 hours and give me the fewest dropped frames.

If you can provide any help, it would be much appreicated.

[housepig]

I would say get a capture card that supports recording to mpeg-2 and take the stuff direct to dvd format - no conversion needed.

I've done captures with NeoDVD where I have the finished disc 15 minutes after the capture was done - in fact I have a box of beta tapes where quality is not critical, but speed of capture and ease of dealing with them is.

so I'm going to cap direct to mpeg-2, import the stuff to DVD Lab and author that way. (I'm not crazy about the authoring portion of NeoDVD).

[fender1]

Going that route, about how many hours of VHS could I fit onto each DVD-R?

[housepig]

all depends on your bitrate.

I find I can get 90 - 120 minutes with nice quality and high bitrates.

the lower you crank your bitrate, the smaller your file. I've heard that most commercial dvd's average around 4,000. I usually encode my stuff with a 2-pass variable bit rate set around 5-6,000 - of course, coming from VHS, we need some extra bitrate to compensate for the impurity of the source material.

check some of the bitrate calculators in the Tools section for more precise estimates.