Selecting a new capture/editing program

[stewnbev]

I have had problems getting my VHS tapes recorded to DVD. I have an "AVerTV Stereo" capture card and it saves the file as a mpegII directly from my VCR. The I was using Sonic MyDVD to do some minor editing (It was very limited). The quality hasn't been as good as I would like, but it's ok.

Now, it seems something went worng. I use the same procedure, but the file size that I save somehow increases in size when I go through the process. It will increase from a 4.1GB 2hr video, to a video half the size. I can't find any changes to settings, any ideas on this problem??

Also.. I'm looking for a program that can take the place of Sonic MyDVD. I'm looking for something where I can view/capture the video then edit and add chapters. Any thoughts on one that will work the AVerTV Stereo card?

[tatty]

I'm no expert but I've been through the painful learning curve trying to use hardware 'TV conversion' cards to convert my VHS collection to DVD. For what it's worth, this is the setup I arrived at.

I have a 'no-name' cheapo 'TV' card that seemed to be complete crap when I bought it several years ago. Since then I have discovered a set of decent Bt88 drivers and applications via this site.

I use 'VirtualDub' to capture. This allows you to capture from any video signal (TV, VHS etc) that the card can see, and save as avi files. I then use 'TMPGEnc' to code the avi to mpeg2, 'TMPGEnc DVD Author' to create the DVD layout (takes the place of Sonic) and finally NERO to burn the dvd. I've done over 200 tapes so far and it hasn't let me down yet.

Additional useful tools I found are 'FFMPEGGUI' which compresses the audio, and HUFFYUV, which compresses the avi and reduces the disk space required to capture.

I don't see why it shouldn't work with any capture card as long as you can rig it to give you avi rather than mpeg. All the software is available through this site. Slower than hardware conversion, of course, but the results are excellent and very controllable.

Good Luck

[stewnbev]

I will look at those links and hopefully be able to save the files in the avi format.. I haven't tried that, and I'm not sure that I have that option.

Thanks for the reply.