Putting My Friends Tape's on to Dvd

[watty252]

Hi all

i Have the entire collection of friends on tape & i would like to put them all on to Dvd as in not willing to spend another fortune on the Dvds from the shop.
Now my question is how do i go about doing this, would i have to buy one of those capture card things?
I seen This Pinnacle product in my local currys that allows you to watch tv through my pc & records off the Tele (is this a capture card by the way)
so i thoght if i could hook my video up through it i could just record videos on to my pc.
Or is there another way i could do it.

Please help as im completely new to all this.
im not sure on what hard ware to use or what.

[Vejita-sama]

There are guides on this or do a forum search for 'star wars hit best shot' for a long tread on capturing from LDs. But here's the basic process:

1. Capture - transfer video from VHS to HD (see the capture guides to left). There are lots of capture cards out there. For best results you should capture uncompressed (or with a 'lostless codec like huffyuv') then encode, but you can save some time (and lose a little quaility) by capturing directly to MPEG2

2. Encode - encoding the captued video to MPEG2, often as seperate streams: m2v (video) and ac3 (audio). If you capture as MPEG2 you can skip this step.

3. Author - this is the process of generating your menus, assigning next/prev, adding chapters, etc. etc.

4. Burn - you'll need a DVDR drive

If you have a lot of tapes encoding to MPEG2 can be a hassle and take a lot of time. The quaility hit for the nicer capture cards isn't that bad (YMMV). Take a look at:

http://www.lordsmurf.com

[Kool_Aid]

A standalone DVD recorder, like the Panasonic E-50 may be a better way to do this.

Put the tape in the VCR, hit the record button on the DVD recorder, and you have your copy in real time......on a DVD-R, that will play in most anything.

The results are as good (or better), as capturing and converting.

[nutstoyou]

I've been capturing vhs-c tapes with the pinnacle pctv rave pci card that I presume you are talking about. I use my jvc camcorder to send the tapes to the tv card so no droppped frames. If you are looking to capture from a vcr then you'll need one with timebase correction or you are going to be dropping frames like there's no tomorrow. Vcr's with tbc aren't cheap but you will be wasting your time without one. If you go this route then use third party software not the bundled pinnacle rubbish. Check www.tv-cards.com for the software and tweaked wdm drivers.
Capture to a ntfs partition not fat32, in either huffyuv or picvideo mjpeg codec. I use the iuvcr capturing software as that works best for me. Once you have the avi on the pc you can edit and convert/author with the guides on dvdrhelp.com.
Good luck.

[verchad]

I have both a pc dvd-r/rw burner and a panasonic dmr-hs2 set top recorder. My suggestion would be to consider many factors like the costs involved, the time involved, and the quality level you would like.

First, if you need to purchase a capture card/unit for your pc and a dvd-recordable drive versus purchasing a set top recorder. Figure out what the costs for each setup would be.

Second, consider that with the pc you are going to need same extra time for converting files and burning versus the set top unit that can record in real time. With the pc you can do some good editing of your files. With the set top units editing is more difficult. Even with a built in hard drive, you can't edit quite as precidely as you could with a pc.

Third, the type and quality of disk you want to make. With a pc you can create all kinds of fancy menus, customize your settings, etc. With the set top unit you have to use their standard settings and menus. For example, my dmr-hs2 will record dvd-r at 1 hour per dvd (best quality), 2hr per dvd (as good as or better than vhs video quality), 4hr per dvd, or 6 hr per dvd. Some dvd set top recorders have tbc built in.

Having said all of this, I tend to use my set top recorder to do the bulk of my transfers. And use the pc dvd-r burner for making copies of my finished products, like my wedding video, for family and friends.

In the end, it's your call. Hope this helps.