VHS to dvd, Pal to NTSC/Secam and otherwise

[victoriabears]

Ok Guys, here goes as I hope a helpful guide to my 3-4 weeks of torture trying out stuff to get my vhs bits to DVD. I live in Canada now, was in London UK for nearly 50 years have lots of good old Brit stuff on PAL

tried lots of freeware, Virtual Dub etc ,
I needed a new computer so started with:-
gigbyte mb/Barton 2500chip/nvida geforce2500/1GB Ram/160 MB Hard drive/225Gb sata jbodfor video work only/LG 4082B burner-wonderful.

I also splashed out on an Canopus ADVC300 which does everything it says it does.

First point I would make is that unless you can leave your computer for a minimum of 8 hours for each one hour of VHS to let it encode the stuff, get a stand alone, I used Tmpgenc express and it is the best(Thats why its the slowest) tried Intervideo win dvd creator, even windows movie maker nothing touches Tmpgenc for reliability and producing DVD's that will playthat is very important, we want our DVD's to last forever<g>, but the players won't.

If you don;t have that patience or time, get Tmpg dvd author, and a stand alone dvd recorder, use the stand alone to do all the "encoding" in real time, either then leave the DVD as is, if you want to get fancy and create edited final product, Tmpg Author does a wonderful job of editing, even though its not the way you are supposed to.

I do not know if the picture quality of a stand alone recorder is up to Tmpgenc, but you won't notice that much of a difference if pulling your hair out is not an enjoyable passtime for you.

Editing your treasured tapes is a lot of fun, but if all you want is to transfer with minimal editing, a PC route is hard work.

I did use a Plextor Convert X, did a good job, just not good enough picture quality for this old fuss budget-so took it back.

Pal to Ntsc or otherway round?, Tmpgenc Author has that facility, capture your stuff to the computer and this software does it, why all these other smoke and mirror options are being touted, dunno, even get the stuff to DVD RW/RAM using a set top , and then use the computer to create a final DVD in the format you want.

I would observe that here in Canada, Wal Mart sells a Philips 727 DVD player that will play everything, to ntsc or pal TV, and using the region hack any region.

Personally I have given up worrying what region/broadcast standard the product is in, for instance, in the UK most players play everything.

I am posting this in the hope its helpful.
Good luck all.

[victoriabears]

Further to my quest for perfection, tried a Philips DVDR75 from Costco Victoria BC, this week.

At best it gives vhs quality on recording from best quality VHS recordings, suspect it just picks up quality it has thrown at it, but records in Pal!

Taking it back soon, Tmpgenc express rules!


Good luck all.[/quote]