Is there a shorter way to do this?

[daesdaemar]

This is the way I make my DVDs:

1) capture, edit, and process with VirtualDub
2) encode the avi file to mpeg2 with TMPgenc
3) demux the mpeg2 with TMPgenc
4) author the resulting audio and video files with InfoEdit
5) burn with Nero

Is there a shorter way?

[Marco33]

The only way I see is to get a capture card that captures right to Mpeg2.

[daesdaemar]

Is that a function of the card moreso than a capture software? Do you know which cards do that?

[Vejita-sama]

There are some things you can do that would save some time.

1) Don't genereate AVI from VDub, instead frameserve from VDub to TMPGenc.

2) Don't demux in TMPGenc, instead under system choose to generate seperate video + audio files (right above the load/save/edit buttons at bottom right of screen).

There are two ways to capture to MPEG. Either on the fly software or hardware encoding. I've never used a hardware encoder (which is normally better) but for software I've used neoDVD v4 which for most VHS back ups is more than qood enough for me.

So what I do to convert my VHS tapes to DVD is capture w/ neoDVD to 352x480 MPEG2 files, demux w/ TMPGenc, then author with Maestro.

[Marco33]

Is that a function of the card moreso than a capture software? Do you know which cards do that?

It's both. My new card MSI TV@nywhere card has the software. So I can capture to Mpeg, Mpeg2, Mpeg4.

BUT, the card HAS TO be able to capture to MPEG2. My old card would just do AVI. Then I had to convert... by the time your done the quality is far from were you started.

[daesdaemar]

Some good tips... Thanks.

How does one framesave from Virtual Dub to TMPgenc?[/quote]

[Thommers]

Cladxp does a lot of those steps for you, it would save you a little time.