newbie capture advice

[efiste]

ive got a dazzle digital video creator 80 (USB) and am trying to capture VHS videos from a vcr to put them on a DVD and from what ive just read on this forum i shouldnt have got the dazzle!!! my first attempt is cr#p and is very poor quality and every ten seconds the picture speeds up for a second then goes back to normal, Surely the dazzle can get better results than this!!!! i am using a amd athlon2.6Ghz with 256 Mb ram with an 80g HD, could it be that the conversion software that comes with the thing is rubbish and if so can whats the best software for doing the job!!!!!

[Anonymous65]

The Dazzle 80 is a USB device without any high quality hardware compression. So, it tries to push "an elephant" through a key hole! It just doesn't work. For low quality email video, it will work, but not for DVD creation. You can try to capture 320x240, and then encode it to 352x240, but the video will be of poor quality. You can get a WinTV PCI capture card for less than the Dazzle, and it will do a much better job, even full resolution 720x480 DVD video.

[Bob W]

Maybe consider the AverDVD EZmaker PCI capture card (CompUSA for $39) it comes with NeoDVD Standard software and the combo does a fine job for me. I also suggest using the Sima CopyMaster box (BestBuy for $39) which will remove any macrovision then filter, amplify, and level the video out from the VCR.

[efiste]

i got rid of the dazzle on your advice guys and got a PCI tv/capture card but it hasnt got the software to convert to DVD it just saves onto the hard drive, whats the best conversion software to use etc etc!!!

[CogoSWSDS]

For conversion I (and quite a few people on this site) would recommend TMPGEnc. It is a good deal for the money - free for MPEG1, free for 30 days for MPEG2. If you want to do MPEG2 past the 30-day trial, get TMPGEnc Plus for $50. Check the Tools section to the left...

As for authoring software, I burn VCDs not DVDs (No DVD burner yet) so I couldn't tell ya what software to use for DVDs. For VCDs I use VCDEasy 1.1.4 as it's free and doesn't have the limitations of the Free version of VCDEasy 1.1.6. Again, check the tools section to the left.

Always happy to help out a Newbie...

CogoSWSDS