VHS/DVD movies to Mpeg hardware?

[skypine27]

I'll start apologizing in advance if this topic has allready been discussed. I read many threads that were similar, but none were quite what I needed. So here goes.

I need to capture 1 hour movies from VHS tapes and DVDs onto my computer. I then need to burn them onto CD-R's, so the capture files have to be less than 800 megs in size.

I was thinking mpeg format? I dont really know the difference between mpeg, and mpeg 2 or 4. I need some simple, fairly inexpensive hardware that will accomplish this. The captures dont have to be perfect, since the source movies themselves aren't.

Any suggestions? I'd prefer a card rather than a USB 2.0 device, but all Ive seen so far is this unit:

http://www.ati.com/products/tvwonderusb20/features.html

ANy help would be greatly appreciated.

EDIT:

These movies just need to be played on computer CD/RW drives. Not on desktop DVD players.

[Baldrick]

do you want to be able to play them on a standalone dvd player? or just on computers?

[skypine27]

For right now, the movies just need to be played on standard computer CD/RW drives. Thats why just regular *.mpg files are what I was looking as a capture format.

However, in the future, when dual layer DVDs get cheaper, I plan on buying a DVD burner.

Does this matter right now? Is there a difference in hardware that I'd want now to capture and burn the movies to CD-rs, and in the future when I may want to burn movies to DVD-R's

Thanks!!

[drjtech]

DiVX is very popular for small sized, high quality files intended for burning onto CD's and playing on PC's.

Check out the "How to convert to AVI/DivX/XviD" section

https://www.videohelp.com/convert#4;13

-drj

[skypine27]

Thanks, Ive seen the threads and FAQs on converting to different video formats.
My questions is about the hardware end of it. Which capture card to get. I can get the software later I suppose.

Thanks for any more capture card suggestions.