Capture VHS-vacation movies, complete solution..

[widde]

Hi!

My father has a couple of old vacation movies, when we kids () were very young. Those movies are on VHS, and my father wants to put them on DVD instead of old VHS-tapes. My question is:
What is the best solution for this kind of stuff?
Which card is probably the best for this purpose?
The quality of the captured movies is priority one. The price is not important.. Well, the price is not so important. Ofcourse it does matter, but we don't want a low budget card, we want a card with good capture options and a card which gets good quality results.
Do you have any solutions/answers to this question, please post it as fast as possible

[rval73]

I just purchased a video capture card that I am extremely happy with. It's the Adaptec VideoH! PCI capture card. It comes with Sonic's MyDVD that lets you capture, amongst other things. I got it from CompUSA for about $129.00

[qpskfec]

The simplest solution to do this is to use a set-top dvd recorder. Recording at the 1hr or 2hr mode yields excellent results. A set top recorder can be bought for under $400 today.

[thayne]

I have a Hauppage pvr-250 and like it a lot. It has real time mpeg-2 hardware encoding at 720X480 and can capture beyond DVD quality (upto 12MBps), which is more than enough for VHS. The mpeg is DVD ready so you can just load it up in your authoring app and create you meanus and burn. Cost about $150. It also has a built in TV tuner for recording TV shows.

[dlb]

What software do you use to capture - thayne.

I have tried quite a few with mixed results. The best I found was Pinnacle Studio 7, but I could not get any audio from my analogue captures.

I would be grateful of any assistance.

dlb.

[Dennis1968]

Dazzle Digital Video Creator 2 (DVC II) PCI. Got it off ebay for $299. LOVE it. Can record up to 10 hours (so far) without any breaks in the video stream. Srtarted this MPEG2 process with a Hauppauge WinTV PCI card with Cyberlink Power VCR2 3.0. no matter what resolution and bit rate and compression, it would always create multiple 600 megs file. The Dazzle does not do this. Cyberlink Support says the limitation is due to the OS and not their software. Did experiments, not is a LIE, the only limitation in Windows for video recording is 4 gigs for FAT32 and 137 gigs for NTFS. I have a combimation of FAT 32. NTFS, Windows 98SE, Windows 2000 and Windows XP Pro.


Wondering what software other users are using? Looked into Creative Labs PVR and the limitation was still there, Have a friend with a ATI capture card using supplied software and still the same limitations. What gives? Need indepth experinces here.

[pb]

I have Power VCR2 ver 3.0, it only does 44.1Khz audio, so is dissapointing for trying to author to DVD. The file size limitation can be overcome by editing the registry, under local user-software-cyberlink-pvr, look for file size entry and change it to what you want.

[lordsmurf]

I suggest the ATI ALL IN WONDER RADEON cards.

Just capture MPEG2, use the VideoSoap filters in the ATI MMC software if cleaning is needed, and then author in your favorite authring program (such as DVDit!) and burn with your favorite burning software (such as DVDit!, Nero, or RecordNow Max).

Do it all the time. Great quality. Hundreds of discs. Wrote a guide, soon to be a full site, much of it dedicated to video/audio restoration.

Not too difficult, along easy user interfaces.

[jar5000]

If Quality is of number one importance, I suggest the CANOPUS ADVC-100. It is a seperate box not a pci or agp card. It encodes straight to DV and does not use your PC to encode. No need to worry about dropped frames, MMC (ATI) compatibility, audio settings, driver conficts...etc. etc. Its about as user friendly as it gets....put it this way....there is no need for anyone to write a guide for it.Just read the reviews on this site about the ADVC-100 and see for yourself.

[Sulik]

Expect that you still have to figure out how the hell to transcode the DV stream to a DVD-Compliant MPEG2 (not exactly user friendly).

[rockstar70]

I like my Adaptec VideOh! PCI with the free Snazzi Movie Mill software. Can't beat it for the price. They have a new version out that has a TV Tuner on board. Can't wait to check it out!

JJ

[aklendathu]

Hi!

My father has a couple of old vacation movies, when we kids () were very young. Those movies are on VHS, and my father wants to put them on DVD instead of old VHS-tapes. My question is:
What is the best solution for this kind of stuff?
Which card is probably the best for this purpose?
The quality of the captured movies is priority one. The price is not important.. Well, the price is not so important. Ofcourse it does matter, but we don't want a low budget card, we want a card with good capture options and a card which gets good quality results.
Do you have any solutions/answers to this question, please post it as fast as possible

If all you want is just making DVD out of these two tapes, have you considered getting the job done by a professional company ? If they're any good, they'll have access to top-quality hardware which is unaffordable by home video-buffs like us...

[onetrueday]

I run a small business converting vhs/camcorder movies to dvdr. if you're interested in saving your money on hardware, considering you're only talking about a couple of captures, let me know.

zooner@aol.com

tom

Unlike most professional organizations, I run a small home setup. I pass along these savings to you and only charge $20 per conversion and free shipping. extra discs are $7 a piece and I offer a fully money back promise.

[Aramique]

Dazzle Digital Video Creator 2 (DVC II) PCI. Got it off ebay for $299. LOVE it. Can record up to 10 hours (so far) without any breaks in the video stream. Srtarted this MPEG2 process with a Hauppauge WinTV PCI card with Cyberlink Power VCR2 3.0. no matter what resolution and bit rate and compression, it would always create multiple 600 megs file.

Is yours external?

[Dennis1968]

PCI, ISA, AGP, built on, means internal. USB, Firewire, Serial, Parralel, means external.

No. the Dazzle DVC II PCI has 2 parts. a PCI card that holds all the encoding chips and a propritary Dongle that has S-Video, RCA Stero Audio and component video. All of the Dazzle capture devices so far do not have a built in tuner, you need an external cable box, VCR, etc..

I wanted to get a single non segmented video file. The supplied software for the Haupage was insufficient. Later got Cyberlink's Power VCR 2 v3.0. I was noticing no matter what the capture settings were, I would only get a playlist file that was linked to segmented video files no bigger than 600 megs each. Recording MPEG-2 720x480 @ 4meg per second results in unadulterated 20 minutes of video.

I personally chose the Dazzle over the Capture cards with built in-tuners because No company hardware or softeare, would support a single unadulterated video files larger than 600 megs.

User pb suggest changinging a line in the Power VCR key to support bigger than the default. I have long since given away my Hauppauge WinTV. No way for me to try his suggestion.

[thayne]

If you have firewire already I would go with this!
http://www.holdan.co.uk/info/data/dac100.htm

If you don't have firewire you can get a FW card cheap....

[rockstar70]

My VideOh! from Adaptec supports files bigger then 600MB. Though I run Win XP and NTFS.