Capture analog to dvd w chapters expectations

[davekstl]

I am trying to make sense out of all the options. I have Nero\Premiere Elements\Premiere 6\WinTV\Pinnacle DV500 and others.

My goal is to capture old VHS tapes to DVDs. I can capture using either of the devices but when I edit and pout in chapters life slows way down A 11 minte VHS tape captured as an AVI, took and hour to burn to dvd.

Is this a fair expectation? Or am I going about this all wrong.

Thanks in advance.

Dave

[TBoneit]

You are going at it one way. Using the computer will take signifigant time. Encoding the AVI to MPEG2 for the DVD is what took most of the hour. Are you happy with the results?

I took another path and bought a Pioneer DVD recorder with a 80Gb drive. That way a 2 hour tape takes me 2 hours to record to the drive, 5 -15 minutes to edit, chapter, name. and depending on the speed of the blank media, 8X takes about 10 minutes to burn and finalize.

Otoh I spent $331 + tax on the recorder, $350 more or less on a JVC 9911 S-VHS recorder for playback, and I forget how much for the TBC to strip macrovision and in general stabilize the video.

In the end you need to weigh time vs money. I came down on the time side despite not being what is called well off. A lot of my older tapes are from the 1980 and up, I'm sure some are even older. I remember buying the original MagVid release of M*A*S*H, one of the first studio titles to be released on tape (one of 50 titles as I rememeber it). I bought my first VHS machine when they were very expensive and blanks were $15 or more. At the time it could do 2 or 4 hour on a tape and a 1 day timer. At that time there were four formats vying for the home. Quasar had one (great time machine?) Sanyo had one (V-cord?) sone betamax and VHS

Anyway to finish making a short story long, many of my tapes are from the earliest days of VHS and Beta, which is why I bought the specific S-VHS I did.

anyhow good luck

edit: do a search on the Pioneer 531h, it has good editing, and video correction features. Those being the reason I went this route after snailing my way through using the computer. Now I'll only be usin gthe computer for recalcitrant tapes.

[davekstl]

So you play the tape into the Pioneer, then record burn it to DVD?

Where in the process do you edit, on the Pioneer?

Thanks for the input!

[TBoneit]

I edit in the Pioneer. Before I capture to it's hard drive I play the tape and make adjustments to improve the picture. I may touch up the white level, the black level, how much color. If needed I adjust the color so people have flesh tones. I may adjust the noise reduction, Sharpness and a couple of others.

Then I rewind and capture. I edit, for a movie trim the start and stop, for TV shows I edit out commercials too. I set chapters. I title the capture. Then I burn.

Depending on my mood, quality of the source and time I may capture at 15Mbs the XP+ setting and when I go to burn it does a second pass that compresses the video bitrate to fit the DVD. Drawback is that happens in realtime so a 2 hour video takes 2 hours to burn, vs burning a 16X blank at 16X if I choose to just set it at 1 hour 50 minutes length setting for a 1 jhour 50 minute video.

Many details of features and user likes/dislikes by doing a search here.

Cheers

[davekstl]

Thanks