Sync problems & quality loss in VHS to DVD - Please advi

[firebirdv84]

First off, here are the specs on my machine: Brand new, Pentium 4, 2.4GHz. 512 MB DDR RAM. 120GB Maxtor Hard Drive. Asus 7133 Capture Card with RCA and S-video inputs. SoundBlaster Live Sound Card. Windows XP Pro OS. I capture video with Power VCR II, convert it with TMPGEnc Plus, and add menus and burn to DVD with Ulead DVD MovieFactory II. My VCR is connected directly to my sound card via RCA cables. I make sure that all programs are closed except the capturing program.

I am trying to convert a bunch of VHS tapes (containing the original airings of a 20 year old television show) to DVD as to preserve them. I have successfully burned one of the episodes to DVD, but I've noticed a loss of picture quality, as well as a gradual audio/video sync problem. I'm quite new to this, so could someone please help me fix this problem? Is it a hardware or software issue? I want to get rid of the VHS tapes only if I can make exact copies of them to DVD, with no quality loss.

Is my capture card good enough?
Am I using the right software?
Should I capture to AVI, then convert to MPEG? Or just capture to MPEG?

Thank you!


Joe

[housepig]

Should I capture to AVI, then convert to MPEG? Or just capture to MPEG?

I'm not familiar with the Asus capture card you have, but unless you have a high-quality card with dedicated hardware encoding, I would suggest you capture as an avi and encode later.

I have an Aver card (based on BT8x8 chip) and I can capture mpeg-2 directly, but I have found that no matter the capture application, the quality is not as good as the quality I get capturing to either a Huffyuv or MJPEG avi and encoding after the capture.

so yeah, anything of an "archival" nature, I'd suggest you capture as an avi.

[Bob W]

I was able to get fair quality with my AVer capture card and NeoDVD Plus but it was such a pain in the arse. Anyway I finally threw in the towel and bought a Panasonic E50 recorder and now the conversions from VHS tape take one forth the time and actually look better than the source tape.