Cheapest way to capture from VCR to Computer

[Kid Ryan]

I was just curious about what would be a cheap method to get movies from my VHS tapes to my computer, without spending an arm and a leg if possible?

[Bob W]

The cheapest way would be to buy the "Aver Easy DVD maker" kit from CompUSA (and other places). It sells for $39 and includes an Aver capture card and all the software you need to capture/edit/author/record. I have seen it on-sale at CompUSA for $10.

[FulciLives]

I have an AverTV Stereo capture card that I boutht at CompUSA for $49.99 and I'm fairly happy with it.

I capture with VirtualVCR using PICVideo MJPEG at the 19 quality setting and 48k 16-bit Stereo PCM WAV audio.

Then I use VirtualDubMod to edit and CINEMA CRAFT ENCODER (aka CCE or CCE BASIC) for my MPEG-2 encoding.

Then I use TMPGEnc DVD Author for the final authoring and burning to DVD-R

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[vcd4ever]

Kid Ryan,

The cheapest solution is to buy a tv-card. I'm using a pixelview playtv pro tv-card that a boutht a couple of years ago for 70$. The quality is so good that i will never use anything else than a tv-card.

vcd4ever.

[vh5150]

https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=188720

You can pick up an ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 7500 for under $70 US on ebay. And it makes a great gaming card too. Plus if you get a 3rd party tweaker like aTuner (free and works for both nvidia and ati cards) your games will look even prettier.

[Kid Ryan]

Thanks for the responses, although I do have another question. Now if I bought a tv card, how would that allow me to capture from a VHS tape? Does it somehow hook into the back of a VCR or what?

[dcapp1]

Yes, depending on what card you buy there will be a cable hookup, a composite or an s-video hookup(for vcr capturing), and an audio hookup. I use an ATI TV Wonder VE card that I bought at Wal-Mart for fifty dollars and I love it.

[joecav]

Leadtek Winfast 2000XP Deluxe is $46 @ newegg and is used by alot of peeps (myself included) You can capture TV as well as VCR stuffs. It's a solid card and comes with all the adapters and cables you're going to need to get capturing. I'd skip the included S/W (WinPVR) and try something else like Virtual VCR or something to do your analog tapes.

[donkey_puncher]

I have an AverTV Stereo capture card that I boutht at CompUSA for $49.99 and I'm fairly happy with it.

I capture with VirtualVCR using PICVideo MJPEG at the 19 quality setting and 48k 16-bit Stereo PCM WAV audio.

Then I use VirtualDubMod to edit and CINEMA CRAFT ENCODER (aka CCE or CCE BASIC) for my MPEG-2 encoding.

Then I use TMPGEnc DVD Author for the final authoring and burning to DVD-R

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

I also have an AverTV Studio card and for some reason I can not use either Virtual VCR or iuvcr. The IUVcr produced a jumbled mess on preview and virtual vcr just produces a black screen with sound.

I've also tried it in Virtual Dub and could not capture any higher than 340x220. I've used windows Movie maker and I was able to capture at 640x480. I also am able to capture in PowerVCR at 720x480, but I'm looking for something that will allow me to capture using MJpeg.

[Bob W]

I use the aVer capture and capture directly to DVD compliant mpeg2 using NeoDVD Plus software.

[lordsmurf]

Nice username, donkey puncher.
Anyway, check out the iuVCR guide at lordsmurf.com (non-ATI AVI capture)

[ronco05]

use windvd recorder.its stupidproof and gives great results.

[donkey_puncher]

Nice username, donkey puncher.
Anyway, check out the iuVCR guide at lordsmurf.com (non-ATI AVI capture)

Hey smurf are you familiar with donkey punches

I checked out your page and read through it. Excellent info. For some reason though I can't get iuvcr to work right. I finally did get virtual vcr working, but iuvcr just gives me a garbled picture. i guess I'm going to have to fiddle around and try and fix it. VirtualVCR did however give me decent results. I'm trying to capture from VHS and eventually put onto DVD. I tried capturing 720x480 with mjpeg compression set to 19. I would like to edit the video somewhat and then i plan on converting the files to mpeg2 via TMPGenc. Probably use nero to burn to dvd. I'm using an Avermedia TV studio card. I also tried capturing in VirtualDub, but it won't let me capture at resolution other than the base resolution. Not sure what the deal is there.

I have a question about capturing resolution. I plan on capturing from VHS and burning to DVD and playing back on a standard analog television. Do I really need to capture at 720x480? Is there a better capture resolution that would allow me to put more video on a dvd and still get the best quality pic as possible. Since a TV can only display a certain number of scan lines isn't it overkill to capture more than the tv will display. I guess capturing at higher resolution would be better if down the road I got an HDTV? i'm not really understanding things I guess. Or would it be better to capture at full resolution and then convert to a smaller one when I encode to mpeg2? Thanks for the help.

[FulciLives]

I have a question about capturing resolution. I plan on capturing from VHS and burning to DVD and playing back on a standard analog television. Do I really need to capture at 720x480? Is there a better capture resolution that would allow me to put more video on a dvd and still get the best quality pic as possible. Since a TV can only display a certain number of scan lines isn't it overkill to capture more than the tv will display. I guess capturing at higher resolution would be better if down the road I got an HDTV? i'm not really understanding things I guess. Or would it be better to capture at full resolution and then convert to a smaller one when I encode to mpeg2? Thanks for the help.

I have the AverTV Stereo which is almost exactly the same capture card as what you are using except mine does not have the FM STEREO RADIO RECEIVER built-in like your model. Otherwise they are the same.

I also capture with VirtualVCR using PICVideo MJPEG codec on the 19 quality setting.

This capture card does great captures at Full D1 but for some reason direct to Half D1 captures are rather soft looking. The work around is to capture at Full D1 but then resize to Half D1 when doing your MPEG-2 encoding with TMPGEnc or CCE or MainConcepts etc.

Also this card does internal scaling. As a result captures at 720x480 have a slightly wrong aspect ratio. I have found that doing 704x480 looks more correct (although it might still be off just a hair's breath).

If you use Full D1 for the final output then pad it so that you have your 704x480 in a window of 720x480 meaning you will have 8 pixels of black on either side of the image (8+704+8=720)

Since you use TMPGEnc then just make sure you select FULL SCREEN (KEEP ASPECT RATIO) for the VIDEO ARRANGE METHOD and that will look right (if your capture was originally 704x480).

Ironically I have found that if you intend to resize later to Half D1 (352x480) then it actually looks better aspect ratio wise if you do your original capture at 720x480 or you must use an AviSynth AVS script to first pad your 704x480 to 720x480 then resize to 352x480

Anyways capturing at Full D1 and then resizing to Half D1 looks REALLY GOOD but doing the original capture direct to Half D1 doesn't look so hot.

Good Luck

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[donkey_puncher]

Hey thanks for the info. Just to go a bit further, I don't understand how this half D1 works. How could a video that is 354x480 look right? Is it interlaced or something? Does this allow for smaller video files? How will the quality look compared to 720x480 on a standard 27" TV?

[Kid Ryan]

I just purchased the ATI TV Wonder VE card that dcapp1 was referring to. Everything seemed to work fine until I tried capturing from a VCR. The picture came out very weird looking with a pink and blue look to them. When I tried capturing from a Playstation 2, the video came out perfect. Any ideas on what the problem is?

BTW, I used both Vircual VCR and iuVCR I believe and both came out the same in terms of picture.

[dcapp1]

Thats weird. Ive captured using VirtualDub and Virtual VCR, and Ive never had a problem. What drivers are you using. If your not using the latest capture drivers from at.com then get them. The driver that comes with the card is bad.