Am I doing right? VHS to DVD

[tryguy]

Like many of you I have a collection of home recording VHS tapes I am converting to DVD's. My goal is to keep the best possible quality for later use in making home movies. Yes, I know they already home movies, but I want to someday edit them down to a "real" movie.

I have a Canopus ADVC50 Capture card (works great) and use Stoik Capturer software to cature the video and put it in 717 meg .avi files. I then put 6 of these files on a DVD (6 x 717 = 4.3 gig).

Everything works great! Trouble is I think I might go broke buying DVD's. Doing it this way I am using 6 DVD's for every 2 hour VHS tape (6 x .40 = $2.40). Is there a better way? I read I can convert them to all sorts of different types of files (divx, mpeg1, mpeg 2, etc.) but am I right when I say I would have a loss of quality? I also wonder if when I go to make a movie (I have Vegas Movie Studio 4.0) if I really need that .avi quality since when I go to convert the movie to a DVD I might be shrinking it down to mpeg to fit on the DVD. In other words, should I be converting this stuff now rather then later? Quailty is my concern although the VHS tapes aren't of great quality to begin with compared to new digital cameras.

Thanks in advance for any input! Sorry that this stuff is very likely been answered in the past. I searched but can't find anything that directly relates to what I am looking for.

[gadgetguy]

If you eventually want to edit these videos with transitions and special effects then it would be best to leave them as lightly compressed .avi. Of course this will require significant storage, but is the only true way to retain quality when you apply the editing. If your future editing will be confined to cuts, then go ahead and encode them to the quality you desire.

[nelson133]

All I can say is WOW, I've never heard of this one before. You need to encode the avi files to mpg2 and then author them. There are all types of software to do this, priced from steep to free, and the free stuff works pretty good.
Vhs tapes do not need to be captured at full dvd resolution, 352x480 or even 352x240 would be fine. You need to do research in the guides section for techniques. I personally have done a great deal of vhs to dvd conversions and the quality depends a great deal on the quality of the original tape and the vcr user to play it. At the leasrt you need a good quality 4 head hi-fi vcr. You have a lot of learning to do, but the info is all here. In addition to the guides, doing a search in the forum will also be helpful. Nyah Levi
P.S. Do these disks actually play on your dvd player?

[rclayton17]

I too am still learning how to backup my old vhs tapes.

I have just been compressing avi's to mpeg2, since I will make dvd movies later anyway.

Since these are old VHS recordings, I don't think i have an issue with losing quality. And it seems like it would be the same for you.

If I were you I would probably just convert it to mpeg2 now. This way you don't have to use up so many dvd's.

Here is a link to my thread where I started to ask about this:
https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=260005&highlight=

[ktnwin]

Hmm.. I have been backing up VHS tapes to DVD all the times.
Typically, one DVD can hold 90min (full D1) to 3 hours (half D1) of VHS video without visible quality loss.
neoDVD is a software (very simple to use) to convert VHS tapes (90min max) to DVD in near real time, quality is excellent. Tape longer than 90min can still be converted to one DVD but the quality is not that great with neoDVD.

[lordsmurf]

352x240 for VHS is never fine. Deinterlaced. Yuck.

[pfh]

120 min capped @ 720x480, ~4000kbps(vbr)= aprox. 4.3 gigs.
Vhs quality being what it is- this setting works well for my eyes and tv.

If I find I have to shrink by 10-15% after compiling dvd with Dvd Lab then I do so without noticable loss of quality.

Either cap at lossless (huge) avi then convert this to 4.3 gig mpeg2 or cap as ~4.3 mpeg2, simple edit with Womble mpeg-vcr then compile dvd.

[SatStorm]

You have to re-encode your DV captured files to mpeg 2. I suggest you 352 x 576/480 if your source is VHS

[gadgetguy]

Not to argue the point, but the way I read his original question he just wants to archive these videos right now so that at a later time they can be edited into a "real" movie. The method he is using now is best for that purpose if he ever wants to apply sfx, transitions, resizing, etc. If he encodes them to mpeg2 now, and then later wants to apply that fancy stuff, there will be quality degradation, at least where any of it is applied.
If I misread the question and that is not a concern, then by all means, encode away.