I have a dozen old Beta and VHS tapes with family movies -
wedding, baby's first steps, etc.

About 3 years ago I thought of dubbing the tapes to VCD. Bought a Pinnacle Studio MP10 external (par port) codec and a CDR/W drive.

Just now getting around to this project. Luckily I have located a
Betamax player (!), and I have a VHS player.

1. Will the video quality of the existing Beta and VHS tapes take a hit if I use my old Pinnacle MP10 setup to burn VCDs? The original tapes were made from a video camera about 20 years ago, and a VHS camcorder about 10 years ago. We're not talking professional work on these tapes, nonetheless I'd prefer not to make copies that badly degrade the picture quality.

The MP10 specs as printed on the box:

Video Capture:
352X240, 176X112 resolution
30 frames/sec
16-500 kb/sec
MPEG-1 BP compression

Audio Capture:
16 bit
32, 44.1, 48 kHz
MPEG-1 layer II compression

Audio/Video Playback
720X480
60 fields per sec
Hardware MPEG-1 decoder w/hor & ver filtering
Composite and S-Video analog outputs

2. If VCDs created from video captured by the Pinnacle MP10 would
result in degraded picture quality (compared to the original Beta and VHS), then what setup would you recommend? As this is a one-time project (I'm not a video hobbyist) I want to buy what is merely adequate to get this job done, not necessarily the latest and greatest hardware and software out there.

My computer:
Win98SE
AMD K6-2 550 MHz
192 Mb RAM
2Gb hard drive C:\
37Gb hard drive D:\
AOpen 40x/12x/48x CD R/W
Nero 5.5.7.8 OEM

If I ought to scrap the MP10 and invest in a better codec, and if I ought to get a DVD burner versus CD, so be it. Just as long as I'm not buying a Mercedes when a Chevy would get me there. Any recommendation would be received most gratefully. Thanks -