Quality of 2-hours-per-disk mode.Is this as good as it gets?

[maiki]

I installed Avermedia DVD Ezmaker PCI card in my Athlon 2600 box with NEC ND-1300A, hoping to archive my old VHS tapes to DVD’s and throw away the bulky tapes.

To capture and process, I tried Nero Vision Express, NeoDVD, and Ulead Movie Factory. For such a cheap capture card, I am very pleased with the quality of the recording, as long as it does not exceed 1 hour per disk.

No matter what I do, if I try to cram 2 hours into a disk, the video quality deteriorates dramatically. It looks like a VHS tape in the SLP mode. But I am not thrilled about the idea of splitting a tape into two disks.

Am I doing anything wrong, or is this as good as it gets with the technology limitation of the current consumer hardware and software? Are your homemade 2-hour disks so good that you are willing to toss away the original tapes you paid a lot of money for?

Thank you.

[peregrin]

I've regularly capture 2 to 3 hours of tape to DVD and can live with the quality , generally it's as good as the tape, at least to my eyes. No matter what you do the quality will never be better then the tape master .

It could be your capture card just isn't up to the job or your settings optimized for capture.

what capture settings are you capturing at ?

[housepig]

I have that same card. are you using the NeoDVD app to do your capture and authoring?

I found I do not like the quality that approach gives me. I get much better results, with the same card, if I capture as an avi, encode to mpeg-2 and author the dvd, each with a different application.

[Bob W]

This is how I did it before I bought my Panasonic DVD recorder. I used the AVer capture card and NeoDVD to capture at the "Best" settings then have NeoDVD make the DVD files onto my hard drive and run those files through DVDshrink or DVD2one. The final result was very-acceptable quality and every bit as good as the source tape.

Now having said all that I get even better results going VHS tape to DVDR with my Panasonic E50 recorder than I ever got via capture card.