Best Tuner Card for Capturing VHS?

[zaraspook]

I need to turn about 25 VHS-C tapes into DVDs and I've been using my very old - at least 12 years - ATI TV Wonder PCI.

I've tried AVI2DVD, Nero Vision, Main Concept, VirtualDub and Ulead Video Studio and I'm not real happy with any of them. The best results were grainy and had blurred motion.

Anyway, I've been thinking of upgrading my tuner card for a while now and I figure that this might be a good time. I don't know if it will help, but I'm willing to try anything.

So, I was wondering if any tuner cards are known for their capture abilities. Would a standalone card be noticably better?

Thanks.

[edDV]

...

The best results were grainy and had blurred motion.

Sounds like you were watching interlaced video on a progressive screen and not understanding what you were seeing. Or your encoded bitrate was too low. Nothing else you buy will be any different.

The first problem is solved with a deinterlacing player like PowerDVD or WinDVD. You probably have a version that was packed with your computer or DVD drive.

If you are going to buy a new capture device, get one with hardware encoding (e.g. Haupauge PVR series, ATI AIW, etc.). No need to reinvent the wheel.

[zaraspook]

To the best of my knowledge, I didn't deinterlace anything. The clip was burned to DVD and viewed on my TV (non-progressive).

I used VBR with a max of 8000kbps.

I also have a fairly quick machine (Athlon64 3200, 1gig RAM) so software encoding shouldn't be too bad.

I have PowerDVD, but how is that going to help me burn a DVD that will look good on my TV?

Thanks.

[edDV]

Try to post a frame cap that shows the motion artifacts. This shouldn't be happening if you kept it interlaced through to the DVD.

Power DVD will deinterlace playback to a progressive computer monitor. It has nothing to do with encoding.

The issue here is monitoring the signal. If you can show the problem with a frame grab, we can help.

Something is wrong with your process. Although compression to high bitrate DVD will limit quality to a minor extent, you shouldn't be seeing any motion issues.

[GeekFunk]

I've found it easy to use a miniDV camcorder with analog video-in, and digital video out via 1394 connection to the computer. The VHS tape in the VCR is sent to the camcorder where it is converted to digital video, and is recorded on the computer's hard drive. Virtually no video quality is lost in the conversion.

Once on the hard drive, there are numerous software apps that can burn the digital video to a DVD: to name two, Nero and Intervideo WinDVD Creaor, which is what I use.

You might have gotten some software with your DVD burner.

Note that not all miniDV camcorders can convert analog to digital on-the-fly in a "pass through" to a hard drive. Some might require that you record from a VCR to a miniDV tape in the camcorder, then record from the tape to the hard drive. So, it is important that you examine the camcorder manual closely.

Understand that I don't have time to worry about deinterlacing, compression ratios, dropped frames, and such. All I wanted to do was to do it the easiest way that gave me pretty good results. The miniDV camcorder method worked for me, and I didn't even have to get my hands dirty.

[zaraspook]

I have a Sony miniDV camcorder and I tried the video pass-through near the beginning of this whole process. It seemed that the color was a bit washed out.

I have a Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-250 on order and I'll give that a try. I am starting to think that my expectations may be too high considering the VHS-C source.

I'll keep at it and see how it works.

Thanks all!

[edDV]

Any motion issues would indicate a problem with the process.

[FulciLives]

In regard to the Hauppauge WinTV PVR 250 ...

Try one of these ways and see which looks better to you:

1.) Record at Full D1 resolution at a CBR video bitrate of 8500kbps with 384kbps MP2 audio

2.) Record at Half D1 resolution at a CBR video bitrate of 5000kbps with 384kbps MP2 audio

Full D1 resolution = 720x480 NTSC or 720x576 PAL

Half D1 resolution = 352x480 NTSC or 352x576 PAL

Method one should look better but limits you to about 60-65 minutes per DVD disc. Method two might have a slightly "softer" look but if the footage is very "noisy" then it might be an improvement. Also you can fit about 110-115 minutes per DVD disc using method two.

Also the Hauppauge WinTV PVR 250 has adjustable levels of "noise" reduction for the video along with a "sharpness" setting etc. It's worth playing around with these settings.

For more info I suggest you check out the following website:

http://www.shspvr.com/

Good Luck !!!

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[zaraspook]

Well, I received my PVR-250 on Friday and finally had a chance to fool around with some capturing. I'm happy to report that my expectations were not too high.

I captured using the DVD Standard Play setting and the results are fantastic.

Now I want to fool around with some settings and see if I can tweak things down enough to get three or four half hour tapes on one DVD. I can't imagine it's that difficult since a two hour prerecorded DVD is great quality.

Hey, does anyone know why that when tweaking the settings in the advanced dialog box of WinTV2000, they won't keep the change? I'll change the bitrate and/or VBR to CBR and I'll open it back up and they'll all go back to default.

Thanks all!

[jman98]

Zaraspook - you CAN change it, it's just a real b*tch to do so. The design of WinTV2000 could be better. I'm talking off the top of my head here as I'm not at home to reference my system, but do something like this to make the changes take. There's a screen (I think) under Movies that 3 has 3 tabs - the first tab shows the pre-set choices like VCD, DVD, etc. and any ones you have created. The 2nd tab says Video and has the video settings and the 3rd tab says Audio and has the audio settings. Make your changes and go back to the 1st tab. You have to fill in the name of the program, even if you just want to overwrite it, and THEN click the save button on the bottom right of this tab. You HAVE to fill in the name of the program. If you just click on it, it will NOT save your changes no matter what you do. You HAVE to enter the name of the program first and then save it. It could be better designed. I may be slightly off on exactly what to do on that 1st tab, but that's really close to what it takes. If you don't want to overwrite a file, just give it a new file name and then save it. The magic to making the changes get saved is the typing in of the file name to save to.

[FulciLives]

For more information about your Hauppauge WinTV PVR 250 ... including a lot of tricks and tweaks ... check out the following website:

http://www.shspvr.com/

They also have forums dedicated to Hauppauge WinTV PVR cards/devices.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman