standalone dvd recorder or laptop dvd burner?

[wrench]

Taking the plunge to transfer home movies from vhs and 8mm on to dvd.
Need a new laptop and dvd player regardless.
Trying to determine the EASIEST/QUICKEST method to make the transfers...
know the price differences but not aware of the difference in ease of use...
mostly transfer, don't think I need a lot of editing....

A) standalone dvd recorder/player like Philips or Panasonic?
OR
B) laptop with dvd burner like Sony or Apple?

Any help is appreciated.
THANKS[/i][/b]

[Greg12]

I don't recomind a laptop for Video processing.

Laptop hard drives tend to be smaller and u must use a firewire device.

Also since laptops rn't ment to be on for a long time, u may have trouble w/ the CPU temp.

I tried to use my Dell 8100 as a video processor and melted the system board around the CPU...twice.

[wrench]

Good point about the CPU.
I imagine I have hours and hours of video to transfer and that could be hard on a laptop's CPU.
Thanks for the reply.

[negon]

Depends on how much money you have to spend. I have a laptop with a DVD burner......The Sony Vaio PCG-GRX670. It has a 2GHZ Pentium 4, 512MB ram, ATI Mobility Radeon 7500, 40 gig hard drive and it is superb for everything video.....

[lagerlout]

Not as good for portability, but remember any DVD burner can be put in an external 5.25" housing. I've seen firewire enclosures for £45 recently, so another £130 for a Pioneer 105 and you have an external writer. This way your not restricted to top end laptops when buying, just go for a lower one with a CDRW in or something.

[mkelley]

Easiest/fastest will be the standalone -- because you are capturing, encoding and burning all at the same time (I have both a standalone as well as a burner). Let's run the numbers:

Standalone:

1) Plug your input source in and burn a DVD in two hours.

Burner:

1) Capture the input source (2 hours)
2) Encode the source (2+ hours -- could be as long as 6 or more if you use slower software like TMPGEnc)
3) Burn the DVD (15 minutes -- 1 hour depending upon burn rate of media and burner)

So you have anywhere from a 2 hour to 4 or five hour difference between the two, with a lot more complications of software and processes (we never even touched authoring software -- add another 15 minutes or more to the process for that). Now, the downside is you won't be able to make pretty menus and/or backup your home DVDs with your standalone (which is why I have both) but if you are just interested in getting your home stuff onto DVD quickly there's no better way to go than the standalone.

[wrench]

Much appreciate the replys;

Sounds like I can get a laptop to handle the work, but what a lot more
work it may be.
Running the numbers paints a clear picture for the standalone - especially since I'm not needing much editing, and can basically transfer in real time.

It appears that the standalone will have all of the required components included like the appropriate in/out connections and will handle the analog to digitial conversion on it's own, is that correct?

I assume for vhs conversion I will need RCA audio/video connections?, and my 8mm camcorder has both RCA and S video.

Any recommendations on the standalone machine?

THANKS!

[mkelley]

You might want to visit the standalone forum here for specific recommendations. It's hard to go wrong with Panasonic -- they sell the largest number of units for a good reason. I bought the E20 about 18 months ago and it's been a workhorse. The newer E30 and E50 units have many advantages but those folks with those machines can tell you all about them.

My unit has RCA as well as S-Video inputs, and AFAIK that's still the case for the new Panasonics (the original units also had component in: mine has component out but not in). You just plug in your source and press record just the same way you would on a VCR -- it doesn't get much simpler.

I believe the E50 has memory so that you can record in memory and then edit somewhat, but once again, I'd advise you to visit the appropriate forum and ask your questions there.

Good luck -- this was how I got started in DVD recording (transferring my home movies over) and I only regret I waited so long (then again, the units are a LOT cheaper now then when I bought mine :>). You'll be soooo happy you won't have to deal with videotape anymore.

[wrench]

Thanks for the advice, it makes sense.
I'll check out the other forums for further details.