vhs2vcd

[jondi]

if i wanted to transfer from vhs to vcd do i need a tvcard in my computer and what is the best freeware to use.

[hwoodwar]

Yes and no, you need some sort of capture card. Many (but not all) capture cards do include a TV Tuner. As far as free software, VirtualDub (w/huffyUV codec) to capture and edit, TMPGenc to encode and VCDEasy to burn to CD (some may dispute this last one.)

[bolta]

Hey there . . .

hwoodware makes a good point about the capture card - even though mine (based on the BT878 chipset) has a built-in tuner, I get far better quality from plugging in my vcr to the composite ports of the capture card.

I prefer the Picvideo mjpeg codec, at quality 19. It's about $58US I think, so not exactly free. Otherwise Huffy is good, (but far larger files, since it's lossless when compared to MJPEG).

TmpgEnc is still the best in terms of quality (although not the fastest) when it comes to encoding. I also use CCE, but again that doesn't exactly fit into your "freeware" category.

Regards,

B.

[SatStorm]

The cheapest Root is like this:

A simply card based on BT878 chipset and has at least a composite input. The cheapest and worldwide avalaible cards with those characteristics, are the Hauppauge PCI cards, like win tv go and win tv primio fm. There are also other solutions, maybe cheaper: Search the Capture card list on the left of your screen.

For freeware software, you need Virtualdub (freeware), HuffyUV codec (freeware), TMPGenc Standard (freeware for mpeg 1), VCDEasy for autoring (excellent and freeware) and a burning CD application (there are some freeware solutions out there).

You can save time IF you buy Nero Burning Rom. Most of the times, this burning utility ships with your CD burner, so in a way it is freeware - like... If you have Nero, you can author (very easy) your VCDs with it. Not an advance solution but fair and okey for most tasks (depending what you want to do of course, if you wish to do music intro menus, entry points, chapters, etc, then it isn't for you!). Also, there are issues with about 5% of the players out there (the typical ones...).

[CogoSWSDS]

The cheapest route is probably a TV Tuner card (I have a WinTV) for capturing, the free huffyuv codec for avi compression, TMPGenc (free for mpeg1, free mpeg2 for 30 days, after that this program is $50); and VCDEasy for authoring and burning the VCD. Since I wanted to do this as cheaply as possible, my only expense was the capture card, which I bought on eBay for about $20.

CogoSWSDS