Help out an old man?

[T.J. McCormick]

I'm trying hard to understand what everyone is posting but I'm about as mixed up as a turkey feather in a hurricane. I'm a retired fire captain, 57 years old and I get confused easily. I just want to copy some old vhs tapes thru a Hollywood DV Bridge and make some SVCD's to preserve them. I would like to have quality at least as good as what I see on tv with my vhs player (if possible). I've read all the "Newbie" guides and printed a stack of them but the more I read, the more confused I get. It appears that TMPGEnc is the way to go but the MPG2 option expires in 30 days. Then what can I do? If one of you kind people would help steer an old man in the right direction, it would be greatly appreciated. I have a P4, 1.6ghz, 640 ddram, Dv Bridge with firewire and a 80gb hard drive solely for video. My email address is: captain315@earthlink.net if you prefer sending an email. Thanks in advance for any help I can get. I know you've got more important things to do than lead me around by the hand.

[Rich927]

What other software do you have? An easy All in One package like Ulead VideoStudio 6.0 which includes DVD/VCD/SVCD burning might work for you. http://www.ulead.com(download the demo and try it out). Does your DV Bridge capture from Firewire or Analog? What I do, is I capture my old VHS to my Digital Camcorder which has a Svideo input/output. I play the VHS tape on a JVC VCR which also has an Svideo input/output. using Svideo, I get less generation loss. Once I have transferred the VHS tape to Digital tape, I then capture it to my computer using the firewire. Once I have it saved as a file, I edit and then convert to MPG-2 or MPG-1. I use VideoStudio DVD/VCD authoring feature to burn my CD's. May seem like a lot of time and steps but i get real good results. You could just capture straight to you computer. That could save some time. Using an analog capture setup. I also use I also use TMPGEnc, VirtualDub and VCDEasy also depending on what the project is. VideoStudio is ok. I'm not crazy about their tech support. It's almost useless. If you have a problem and send an email to them, it takes about 2 days before they email you back and say they need "72" hours to answer your question.(still waiting).

(54 yr old man on disability with some time on his hands)

[dgraham]

Hey.

If you like using Tmpgenc, go to http://www.pegasys-inc.com/e_main.html where you can purchase Tmpgenc Plus. The mpeg-2 encoding option will not expire when you purchase it. And, the website says "some new fetures!". I assume they mean features.

-D

[T.J. McCormick]

Thank you both for your replies. The DV Bridge takes either analog or dv and sends it to the computer via firewire as digital video. From there, I get lost. I bought a video package called "Video Deluxe" which I like for it's abilities and simplicity. The program that came with the DV Bridge is called "MainActor" and is more powerful than Video Deluxe. I've yet to learn either of them but I'm still struggling. My question now (I think) is what do I save it as after I get it edited. Then, do I use TMPGEnc to convert it to SVCD - MPEG2 format or just use what the program saves it as? I read a lot on here about how good TMPGEnc is that I feel like it should be used. I understand that SVCD uses MPEG2 but at a resolution of 480x480. Another question is.... am I able to make an SVCD with a full screen resolution of 720x480 to get the best end result? I guess I'll have to do what "D" had to say and that's go buy the Pro version of TMPGEnc and not worry about the time limit.

Thanks again for any advice.