does the PC allow me to make video/dvd quality video backups

[kkkkkk]

i've gone thru ton's of posts on this board, there's a great one about quality a week or two ago, but seems to be implying that quality is not easily acheived. I want to do a fairly simple thing, if it's possible. I've got a Hi-8 camcorder, with s-video out. The pc, 333 celeron, nothing special, has an ancient elsa victory erazor card, which has video in/out, including s-video in/out. I've got w98 and xp, and a ton of hard disk space. I want to copy my Hi-8 tapes onto the PC, then burn them onto cd's under whatever is appropriate, so that if i were to put the cd's into a stand-alone DVD player hooked up to a normal household PC, then it would be like watching at least a normal VHS video (and maybe better?). I would have thought that, in broad terms, this (and then perhaps the equivalent to copy my old vhs and s-vhs tapes onto CD) would be possible. Am i missing something?

thanks

KKK

[Treebeard]

I want to copy my Hi-8 tapes onto the PC, then burn them onto cd's under whatever is appropriate, so that if i were to put the cd's into a stand-alone DVD player hooked up to a normal household PC
kKK

if your going to burn to cd then put in dvd player then hook up to computer whats the point of using the dvd player. If you are going to burn them onto a cd then all you need to watch them on you computer is your cd rom drive.

dont know if your computer will have much fun capturing and converting video. Conversion will take alot of time on a 333 celeron 8)

[gll99]

You lost me in the part that SLBOSS926 quoted too.

Your Hi8 source is reasonably good and you say you have a lot of HD space but to get it to the pc in the best state possible you will want uncompressed or at the very least a lossless codec like Huffy. Maybe 10+ gig per hour.

I don't know if your system can endure straight capture without dropping frames. If you can then you either have 2 choices do you re-compress to to (windows media, Real Media, or avi using and mpeg4 based encoder like divx, xvid or mpeg4) or go with vcd/svcd.

Either of these options will let you use your TV-out to view your videos from the HD or from a cd but the svcd/vcd will also let you view them on your standalone DVD player hooked to a tv.

If your captures cannot be done lossless because your system is too slow then you will have to capture using a fast encoder like divx/xvid/mpeg4 but may also have to chose options which would limit the quality of your captures.

[kkkkkk]

sorry all, my mistake; i want to be able to play them in a normal standalone dvd connected to household TV....... So it sounds like it's possible but there are "choices"? I would like to keep the best quality reasonably possible, but to have e.g. 1/2 hour per cd? is this a reasonable amount to expect to fit on? how much compression would i need to do for that, or can i get that much on uncompressed? I'm also now having trouble with capture things; not convinced i know what i'm doing here, is this the right forum to ask about setup of capture utilities? i keep getting a message from the elsa capture utility saying it can't initialise. anyone know of another "thing?" that will enable the video-in port of this ancient card? thanks.

[mats.hogberg]

For no more than 30 min/CD, (X)SVCD is your best bet. The quality is beyond VHS by far. Picture quality is a relative subject, but to me, even VCD is better than VHS (at least if the tape isn't in mint condition).
Even if VHS doesn't suffer from the occational macro blockiness, there's always a degree of noise present, that (S)VCD's don't suffer from (not to mention degradation over time/views).

/Mats

[Mavrick]

I agree with mats...

XSVCD with a VBR around 4000 will give you great video. Just make sure your DVD player can handle it.