Brand New Bie question

[didikai]

I have Pentium III, All in Wonder capture card, 40 gig HD, CD burner, DVD burner coming this week, and a couple of pieces of video software.

Questions:
I have a camcoder tape that runs for 1 hour.
How can I transfer it to CD so I can watch it on TV / edit out some parts.
I converted some to VCD, but because of maybe my hardware, the quality is krap.
How can I get the same quality as the tape?
I really need a master CD I can run copies off.
Would I need to take this somewhere to get it done professionally?

Thank you

[Gees]

I'd recommend you start at the What IS sections in the top left corner. VCD is low quality.

If you have a DVD burner on the way, read up in advance in the Guides about DVD.

[ImaWeTodd]

Questions:
I have a camcoder tape that runs for 1 hour.
(1) How can I transfer it to CD so I can watch it on TV / edit out some parts.
(2) I converted some to VCD, but because of maybe my hardware, the quality is krap.
(3) How can I get the same quality as the tape?
I really need a master CD I can run copies off.
(4) Would I need to take this somewhere to get it done professionally?

1. Read about capture <<<=== Over there
2. VCD quality is "krap" Might try SVCD for 1 hour source
3. Quality generally goes down as you process. Trick is to start with high quality and process as little as possible. Unfortunately vhs does not tend to be a great starting point. Mpeg compression then makes it worse. The less you compress it the better (the higher the bitrate the less your loss).
4. If you have a deadline for a good product ... get someone to do it

[overloaded_ide]

Yes, if you have a DVD burner on the way, why would you want to do a VCD? It can be done, but quality isn't that good. Even SVCD won't be as good as the tape.

I have made cartoon VCDs of about an hour. Not too bad, artifacts all around the charactors though durring almost any movement. Not bad, good for demos so kids can see what the cartoons are, and I don't care if the little ones drop em or step on em, like 15 cent disks! So what, long as they don't break em and hurt themselfs!

You need to make a DVD to get the same quality as the tape.
Set your ATI MMC software (7.7 or higher!) to 352x480, about 7,000-8,000 bps, stereo audio at 48,000hz, and capture to Mpeg 2. Then Author that Mpeg2 file into a DVD with Tmpgenc DVD author, use the built in burner to burn to DVD R disks after you made the files.

Also durring the Author part you can cut out parts you don't want on the DVD easily. Also make some chapters and menus if you want.
You can add lots of files or use just one.

That's skipping some stuff, like if you capture to avi and encode to mpeg2 with Tmpgenc PLUS you can uses filters and such to try and improve the quality.

Lots of guides to the left to help you either do it fast, or do it right for best quality posible. I mentioned the fast way, capture to mpeg2, author it, burn it, and the results are very good!!!