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  1. I am thinking about starting a small business converting home videos (VHS, Hi-8, DV) to DVD. I have some experience converting my own videos to DVD and they work perfectly. But is takes long. High volume conversion is definitely different cake! My question for the gurus: what systems and configuration would you choose to be able to convert over 100 tapes per day to DVD ?
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  2. I cant think of any way this could be done (easily). I mean you could always buy 100 high spec PC's and get 100 operators to use them, but not very practicle, and you would soon be out of business.

    You need to capture, I dont know of any system that can do this faster than real time. So assuming 1 hour per tape you are looking at 100 hours there.

    Encoding, again even if using a high spec machine and a fast encoder you are not going to encode at much faster than real time, and more than likely considerably slower.

    Authoring and burning, a minumum of 25-30 mins per disc, (assuming full discs).

    There may be professional equipment out there that can complete these processes in a much quicker time, that I do not know of. But I would not like to hazard a guess at to how much it would cost to set up.
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  3. Get Slack disturbed1's Avatar
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    Multiple PCs with hardware MPEG2 capture.

    Set up a few for capping, you don't need blazing speed since it's a hardware MPEG2 board.

    Set up a few for authoring and burning.

    100mbs ethernet is nice (8MB/s) but gigabit would be much nicer when transfering your 4gig mpgs from pc to pc.

    I use 5 PCs, 3 for capping, and 2 for burning and I put out 20-25 DVDs a day at 1 speed burning (most of which are just dupes). Burn for an hour, rest a half hour and sleep somewhere inbetween.

    To do 100 conversions a day, I'd reccomend at least 8 computers for full time capturing, and 6 different computers with 4x burners. That's 14 computers, 8 with capture cards, and 6 with DVD burners. To set this up properly you'd need to invest around $22,000. You can cheap out, cut corners with $14,000, and end with a lot of pissed off customers. You'd also need a few staff.

    I run all 5 PC myself, while my girlfriend handles orders, and the label/covers. It can be a very daunting task.

    Quality should always come before quantity.
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  4. If you have a ReplayTv pvr,
    you could connect the output of the vcr
    to the input of the Replay.
    Set encoding to high, and it will
    convert the tape to a dvd-ready
    (depending on model of Replay) mpeg.
    You would have to transfer this file to
    your computer, do edits if necessary,
    then burn.

    R.
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  5. The FASTEST way would be a bank of set top DVD recorders. Real time encoding & burning - you just need to finalize at the end. You won't get much in the way of menus & authoring choices, but you said you wanted fast.
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  6. DVD recorders, thats it! Thanks Jester. Most of them have i.link input as well for DV tapes.
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  7. Just remember this - the set top DVD recorder will soon be a commodity item, available for a couple hundred bucks at every Wal-Mart. At that point your potential clientele will shrink FAST. Think of how amazing it was to be able to transfer old formats to CD a few years ago. Those few who had burners could charge well for the service. Now that every kid with a $500 PC can do it, the rates have dropped. The same will happen with video transfer.

    That is, unless you can do something special. If you're really good at authoring REALLY professional DVDs, you can build a business there.

    ...just another view, before you spend a few grand.
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