Analog VHS and DV camcorder burn to DVD

[boneless]

I've been reading a lot of posts and wanted to know which direction to take to convert VHS to DVD and DV camcorder footage to DVD. The quality is personal use only, but would like to get best possible while maximizing disc space. I'm thinking of 2hrs per DVD is reasonable.

I was planning to capture with Win moviemaker for DV and Adaptec Videoh USB external box for analog(no firewire on it). Then convert to MPEG-2 with TMPG unless people have a faster and better solution. Then burn with either NERO 6 or recordnow Max.

Any recommendations on changes? Is this the quickest and reasonable quality way to do this?

[redwudz]

If you can afford it the ADVC-100 is a good choice. You do need a cheap firewire card, though. Really if you have a DV camcorder you may be able to use it to convert your VHS videos to DV. I use WINDV to transfer DV to my harddrive. Then you can use TMPGenc for mpg conversion and TMPGenc Author for DVD authoring. It also works to burn the DVD. I would explore the guides on this website for the best information to make the decision on what you want to do and what you want to pay.

[buttsy00]

redwudz,

you said below "Really if you have a DV camcorder you may be able to use it to convert your VHS videos to DV."

how is this possible... I have a DV camcorder and I am curious as to how I can do this?

Any help would be appreciated

[Bob W]

"I was planning to capture with Win moviemaker for DV and Adaptec Videoh USB external box for analog(no firewire on it). Then convert to MPEG-2 with TMPG unless people have a faster and better solution. Then burn with either NERO 6 or recordnow Max."

Yeah I have a much faster method and the quality is going to be better than you will ever get from any capture. Just get a Panasonic DVD recorder.

[onetrueday]

i think the best way is to use a miniDV as well.

I use dvio to capture, tmpgenc to convert, and tmpgenc dvd author for the authoring. works fantastic.

I'm exploring other means as well. DVDlab is amazing, but tmpgenc dvd author will get you started.

If these videos are for your own use, look into putting more on each dvd. You can easily put 4 hours with no real loss of quality by reducing the resolution by have and running the video bitrate at 3500-4000 during the encoding process. The original VHS tapes rarely look stellar, so you might end up with NO loss of quality. I run a conversion business myself, so if you'd like any help or guidance, let me know. I also offer sweet discounts to dvdrhelp members, which would help you avoid buying any hardware at all and save you a mountain of time.

[buttsy00]

Thanks onetrueday,

I have a dv camera and a firewire connection.

I have connected the av cords to my vcr and my camcorder and when i hit play on the vcr it plays through my camcorder.

But as soon as I try to capture the video, it automatically plays the dv tape that is in my camcorer and records that?

How can I get around this?

[buttsy00]

I just took the mini dv tape out of the camcorder and that fixed the problem above....

I am only capturing at 720 * 576 though and would like to capture at 352 * 576 and convert to VCD later on as I don't have a DVD burner at this stage....

Is there a way to do that? I am using Ulead movie studio at the moment...

What programs do you recommend?

[holistic]

buttsy00 -

...would like to capture at 352 * 576 and convert to VCD later on as I don't have a DVD burner at this stage....

Some forward thinking : Make ~20 minute MPEG2 streams (or if you are really ambitious MPEG2 video stream and AC3 audio stream) and store them for future DVD authoring on CD.

Why because you DV is already 720*XXX and audio is 48kHz.

The disks you make can then be used to make VCD's.

][

[buttsy00]

How can I do that?