Help, Help, Help

[fubar]

Hello to all,
I am not technology challenged. I have been computing for the better part of 10 years now and know my way around a computer fairly well. I've built my own machines, done some minor programming and even a little hacking.

I want to convert my VHS home movies to DVD. I thought I knew enough about it to get started, but decided to do some research on it and find out what other people have to say about it before plunging into the money pool of equipment. I was turned on to vcdhelp.com and must say it is an excellent source of information, and from what I've read in the forums the people responding are knowledgeable and very helpful...Kudos.

However, after doing much research and reading I have found myself to be MORE CONFUSED THAN WHEN I STARTED THIS PROJECT. Sheesh...I can't believe the amount of different hardware and choices that one must make to get started with a simple project as this. And it appears that there is only now a beginning to standardize some of the DVD recording (and even playing) equipment.

Well anyway, here is what I want to do...maybe someone can help.

First and formost, I want to convert my home movie VHS tapes to DVD format, for safe keeping and ease of viewing as well as maybe doing some creative editing to put together some footage to give to family and friends. I've done similar with powerpoint presentations and stills, and I think it would be fun to do the same with some video. :P

So, I guess it needs to be compatable with a large variety of players. I don't, as of yet, have a DVD recorder, but do have a very good CD-RW drive, and a good Sony digital camera, MVC-CD300, but it's capabilities are obviously limited. I'm not sure that the CD-RW drive will be enough as VCD does not appear to be compatable with many players...especially the older models.

Second, I may want to, down the road, do some DVD copying. It's not on my agenda right now but I would like to have the capability should I decide to delve into it later on.

Of course money IS an object, as it is in everything these days, and from what I've seen so far one could invest thousands into a project such as this. And that is where a major part of my dilema stems from. I want to make sure that the money I invest will be for the correct equipment the first time, and I want decent equipment that I can rely on for at least a couple years so I am prepared to spend some.

So what would the recomendations be? Get a good quality DVD+R/W and a capture card? If that's the way to go then from what I've read a hardware card for encoding would be the best way to go...appears to be much faster at converting.

I like the idea of the DV camcorder but it doesn't solve the problem of getting the data onto the DVD disc, and a DV camcorder plus a DVD+R/W drive is just way too much money to justify converting some old home movies to disc.

Any thoughts and advice is greatly appreciated...TIA...Fubar 8)

[WizyWyg]

Hello to all,
I am not technology challenged. I have been computing for the better part of 10 years now and know my way around a computer fairly well. I've built my own machines, done some minor programming and even a little hacking.

Good then some terms may not fly over your head ^_^

I want to convert my VHS home movies to DVD. I thought I knew enough about it to get started, but decided to do some research on it and find out what other people have to say about it before plunging into the money pool of equipment. I was turned on to vcdhelp.com and must say it is an excellent source of information, and from what I've read in the forums the people responding are knowledgeable and very helpful...Kudos.

Most of us were in the same position as you. In fact when I started, vcdhelp.com wasn't even around yet. And the only codecs we could work with was Indeo and Sorenson and MPG1 for vcd's was the hype. SVCD's were just showing up, but not as popular yet.

However, after doing much research and reading I have found myself to be MORE CONFUSED THAN WHEN I STARTED THIS PROJECT. Sheesh...I can't believe the amount of different hardware and choices that one must make to get started with a simple project as this. And it appears that there is only now a beginning to standardize some of the DVD recording (and even playing) equipment.

Actually nothing is standard for DVD encoding or authoring. Till the industry agrees on some sort of standard, itll be non-standard for quite awhile. But that's alright, if you pick the right equipment, you'll be fine.

Well anyway, here is what I want to do...maybe someone can help.

First and formost, I want to convert my home movie VHS tapes to DVD format, for safe keeping and ease of viewing as well as maybe doing some creative editing to put together some footage to give to family and friends.

Exactly why I am doing it myself. 1658 VHS tapes dating back to 1984 / 50 Beta tapes dating back to 1982. Yup, I have that many and it grows everyday. I do a lot of taping. Im slowly tranfering many to DVD.

I've done similar with powerpoint presentations and stills, and I think it would be fun to do the same with some video. :P

Actually its nerve racking....J/k. Its quite fun.

So, I guess it needs to be compatable with a large variety of players. I don't, as of yet, have a DVD recorder, but do have a very good CD-RW drive, and a good Sony digital camera, MVC-CD300, but it's capabilities are obviously limited. I'm not sure that the CD-RW drive will be enough as VCD does not appear to be compatable with many players...especially the older models.

Uh, no VCD is practically supported by many players these days. There isn't a day that manufacturers aren't building into them the capapbilites to play VCd's, SVCD's, mp3 discs, mini-dvds and so on a so forth. Use the DVD Player Compatiblity chart to narrow down what you want and what you want to do with it. I myself own 3 dvd players, all bought because of reccomendations from the list here. An Apex to view other regions discs, a Pioneer to view SVCD/VCD/MP3 discs, and DVD-R/+RW discs. The other one was a player I bought when the hype about dvd came about, so I dont count that anymore. I just watch my regular dvd's on it.

Also, you would need to check to see their compatiblity with DVD-R/RW/+R/+RW discs. This can determine how much money you're willing to spend on the player and on your drive.

Second, I may want to, down the road, do some DVD copying. It's not on my agenda right now but I would like to have the capability should I decide to delve into it later on.

Well, that WILL BE WAY down the line if hte industry gets their way. Direct copying is out of the question with today's tech.

Of course money IS an object, as it is in everything these days, and from what I've seen so far one could invest thousands into a project such as this. And that is where a major part of my dilema stems from. I want to make sure that the money I invest will be for the correct equipment the first time, and I want decent equipment that I can rely on for at least a couple years so I am prepared to spend some.

You dont have to get all parts now. Slowly get them. Research. My last purchase was the DVD writer. Everything else I got beforehand.

So what would the recomendations be? Get a good quality DVD+R/W and a capture card? If that's the way to go then from what I've read a hardware card for encoding would be the best way to go...appears to be much faster at converting.

Well first off, GET A good computer.
I would highly suggest that if you plan on doing a lot of video encoding, authoring, etc, get a separate computer to do this. You can get a nice one for under $1000 with enough strength, power and space to do what you need. Pentium 4 based is my reccomendation since it wont have problems with drivers, some capture cards can't work with Athlons. Make sure you have at least 1/2 gb of ram, and 40 GB of HD (80GB is prime). Authoring to dVD can take a lot of HD space.

Then search into capture cards and weigth cost of what you want to do, what you are willing to spend and the quality you want to achieve. Since you are transfrerring from VHS to DVD, there is already a quality loss there, VHS is analog signals. A nice card for under $300 should do you fine. You may want to look into a card that can do:
SVHS, DV Firewire, and Analog capture. Currently I use the Dazzle Hollywood Bridge as its a Firewire external capture unit (so no opening up the computer ^_^). It does SVHS, Analog and Firewire capture (so have a firewire card to your computer as that's its main connection).

http://www.videoguys.com is a good place to start.

I like the idea of the DV camcorder but it doesn't solve the problem of getting the data onto the DVD disc, and a DV camcorder plus a DVD+R/W drive is just way too much money to justify converting some old home movies to disc.

::cough:: hitachi just came out with DV camera that also records to dvd's::cough::

Hitachi DVD Camcorder With 2.5" LCD

But basically yeah, it would be useless to use a DV camera to transfer movies. ^_^

[fubar]

WizyWyg,

Thank you for your detailed response to my situation...your time and efforts are much appreciated.

Well first off, GET A good computer

I believe that I am OK in this area. I have a P4 1.5, with 512MB ram, NVIDIA TNT2 Model 64 PRO AGP display card and a Soundblaster 5.1 Live sound card. My primary hdd is a 20G (7200) ATA 100 with XP PRO, and my secondary drive is a 60G (7200) ATA100 drive that I use primarily for data. I also have another 60G(5400) ATA66 drive available if needed.

I looked at the Hitachi DV camcorder..think I'll pass. Besides, It only has the old USB and doesn't have firewire. Gosh, you would have thought that they would have at least went with the new 2.0 USB. I guess since you can burn directly to DVD with it they figured you wouldn't need anything faster, but if you ever did want to transfer to computer the firwire would be sorely missed...IMHO

Anyway, I believe what I will do is go with an encoding card/software suite, such as the Media Studio Pro 6.5 DV, and then get a good DVD+R/W drive, like maybe the HP DVD200i.

What are your thoughts on this combo??

Thanks...Fubar

[Allan55]

Hi,

With that many tapes I assume you're a serious collector who wants to maintain the maximum quality possible. So here are some ideas:

Some video cameras have something called "pass-thru". This allows you to plug-in an analog source and convert it to DV in the camera and then pass DV to the comuter via firewire. If a DV camera in in your future this is a very good choice because these capture components seem to be of very high quality (I only have experience with one Sony model). You only need to add a relatively cheap firewire card to your computer.

VCD has less quality than a VHS tape, SVCD has higher quality than VHS tape, and DVD has the best quality (so far?). I settled on SVCD at a bitrate of 2000 (still much better than VCD) because after processing with the filters in VirtualDub (for me VirtualDub is an editor and preprocessor; filtering in VirtualDub gives me improved quality; it also captures with some hardware) I get pretty good quality. For transfers from VHS this SVCD setup allows me more quality than exists in the original. It appears to be better than Beta as well, but I'm relying on a friend for this comparison.

I get around 44 minutes per CD with this configuration... I'm waiting for prices to drop further for DVD. Check the DVD Player compatibility list for SVCD support because it is the least supported "standard". My Pioneer xx343 works well; as does a (different) friend's new JVC xxx500.

The really new DVD+R standard is coming on strong. Media in Canada is around $10 (maybe US$4.50 ?) which is around 2x the cost of CDs for the same amount of storage. Since it's new, prices could drop soon (I hope!). Also, 6-8 "manufacturers" have announced these drives so competition should drive prices lower as well.

If you intend to do any kind of editing or processing (filtering), I strongly suggest you capture with the least compression possible. For me this was DV from a Dazzle Hollywood Bridge (the Canopus ADVC100 didn't exist at the time). I use Scenalyzer to capture and am very happy with it.

Personally, I wouldn't buy an internal capture card. My own experience with a few of them and others' experience as reported on these forums suggest too many have really wierd problems.

A really fast computer for MPEG encoding is a "must" for this many tapes. But a few details may help.

A fairly basic current video card is more than adequate (as long as it does "overlays"). I'm using an nVidia T400 card. "Better" cards might be needed if you're also into games but the video card is a minor component in video processing (sounds wierd doesn't it).

I see no real difference in processing speed between 256 and 512 MB of memory. Get the fastest memory possible for your MB.

The faster the better for processors. TMPGE (a popular MPEG encoder) claims to be optimized for the P4 but the P4 also costs more for eqiuvalent performance. I have had no problems with an original Athlon 1.2GHz and Athlon XPs (1600+ and 1900+). It takes around 4x time to frameserve from VirtualDub and encode to MPEG with TMPGE using an Athlon XP 1900+ and even longer (up to 20x with heavy filtering). "4x time" means that 1 hour of video takes 4 hours to encode this way.

I've transferred DV from the Hollywood Bridge to a 5400 RPM dedicated hard drive with no trouble. Newer 7200 RPM drives obviously are fine too.
2GB of HD space holds 9 minutes 24 seconds of DV so you need lots of HD space. Frameserving from VirtualDub into TMPGE also means you don't need space for another (huge) intermediate file.

Better motherboards are faster than cheaper ones as well as having better quality. I've had very good results from Asus. Chipsets are important too. In just the last few months even "low-cost" chipsets are suddenly getting good reviews! See www.tomshardware.com.

Heat is a significant factor because your computer will be running at max for extended periods of time. Ensure you have really good cooling.

When I first started (around 9 months ago) nothing worked; I had tremendous problems; etc; etc... Bought Scenalyzer and got VirtualDub to work with my DVs and suddenly everything is running smoothly... I still can't believe it!?!?!

IMHO: QUALITY ... QUALITY ... QUALITY in your components, including sofware

Allan