Archiving VHS - VCD, DVD, or...?

[patrik]

Greetings and thanks in advance for your help!

After finally badgering my parents into putting their very old Super-8 home movies onto VHS 5 years ago, I'm realizing that VHS is not forever, and am looking into how best to archive them. I'd like decent quality, and hopefully the ability to playback through either a computer or a DVD player.

I'm assuming my options are VCD, DVD, or simply dubbing off to another VHS tape (yuck!).

The one DVD authoring service bureau I talked to wanted $50/five minutes, which is way outside of my parents budget considering they've got several full-length VHS tapes.
For that price, I could purchase a high-end G4 with the Pioneer DVD burner and do it myself - which actually is a possibility (see note).
Given that all I need is a straight to disk recording, no fancy stuff, menu's etc, should I be looking at service bureaus, or since it's almost time to buy a new Mac (no comments from the peanut gallery on Mac vs PC, please!), should I spend a little more and get this functionality?
What are the tradeoffs of VCD vs DVD?

Right now, I have G3 (an upgraded 7100) with a CD burner and Toast 4 (which I gather does not directly burn VCD's without upgrading to v5). I also have an antique Quadra 660AV, but no other video capture hardware.

As I am eligible for Apple's educational discount, the G4 w/DVD burner would cost me about $2500. However, the low end G4 (how much lower can it really be, for pete's sake?!) has a very nice special price for me right now, about $1100-$1200. The burner I can pick up on ebay for around $450, but I've heard that the software is not sold separately, and I would need to buy the iDVD Pro version which is somewhat pricey (educational price is $500, about a 50% discount!), so that would save about $400 over buying the faster G4 with everything all set to go.

I'd very much appreciate some advice and direction - there are simply too many options to hold in my poor brain until I get more of a handle on this.

Service bureau, G4, or video capture for present G3? VCD or DVD? Authoring software (hey, what is the difference between iMovie and iDVD anyhow?).. *boggle*

Again - thanks in advance for your help!
- Patrick

[Vejita-sama]

First, take a look to the left under the "Capture" section. As your source is VHS you'll need to get a capture card to 'record' yor VHS source to your HD.

For the best results you should use SVCD or DVD (remember thou that you can't improve the source quaility, there are filters you can run to try to put GIGO).

DVD allows for a higher bitrate than SVCD (~6000kbit/s vs. 2520kbit/s). However, from a VHS captured source the quaility will be about the same. On the otherhand, a SVCD will only hold ~40min of video, while a DVD will hold ~1:40.

So if you've got the money DVD is better (higher bitrate and more storage). But if money is a concern, SVCD is ok.