Newbie Questions on converting VHS to DVD

[clem2270]

Hello,

First I want to apologize for not taking the time read all the forum posts that are listed hear; but currently I don’t really have the time to read all the posts.

I have a read a number of them and visited some of the sites that everyone has suggested and looked at some of the different products that have been recommended.

But here is my little wrinkle in the forum discussion.

I have a closet full of VHS movies and almost all of them are either 2 / 4 / 6 or 8-hour tapes; and I would like to convert them over to a DVD player compatible format. My end result is that I would like to be able to convert one of the 8-hour tapes directly to a single DVD r disc and then be able to play that disc in any home entertainment system DVD player.

For computing equipment I have four computers to choose from.

System 1:
Dedicated gaming system. AMD XP 2500 Barton / 1.0g PC3200 / 80gb SATA / Firewire / SoundBlaster audigy OEM / WinXP pro / Geforce 4 4400 / etc

Daily Email and surfing system: AMD XP 2000 / 1.0g PC3200 / 3 ea SCSI u160 drives 2 ea 36gb and 1ea 17gb and a 80 ATA/EIDE / SoundBlaster Live OEM / WinXP pro / Geforce 3 Ti200 / etc

PIII 800 system / 512 mb PC133 / 20gb EIDE / Win98SE / Geforce 2 / etc

AMD XP 1700 system / 1.0gb PC266 / 60gb EIDE / ATI radeon ( model ??? 9100 )128mb Sapphire Manufactured / WinXP pro / etc.

I currently have an Emerson 4head HiFi HQ VCR.

I have hopes of using either the dedicated email/surfing machine or the AMD XP 1700 system for the video conversion process. And I plan on purchasing a multi-format DVD burner in the near future (probably one of the Sony models) and I am also planning on getting a larger harddrive for the movie archiving process.

I would like to hear what the other members of this forum would suggest for a newbie like myself, on what equipment and software to acquire to make all this work. I’m not really interested in a stand alone conversion device, I would prefer an externally connected Firewire device or a PCI interface device with a “breakout” box. Then once I decide on what route I will take I will probably need some help on how the whole process will go. ( device and software settings/setup; media capture; data conversion process; and output / burn to DVD media )

So far I have looked at the following “converter devices” : Plextor ConvertX 179.99 (tigerdirect) (USB 2.0 connection only/ but claims MPEG-4 compression) / Pinnacle moviebox DV $170.00 (zipzoomfly.com) / Canopus ADVC-100 $244.95 (pricewatch.com) / Datavideo's DAC-100 $193.99 (pricewatch.com)

I want to thank you all for your help.

The jacle

[g_shocker182]

I doubt the first two you listed will drop any (erraneous) frames..


I have the Pinnacle moviebox and it works great for me but most people will tell you to go with the Canopus ADVC-100.

[redwudz]

I'd recommend the ADVC-100. It's portable between different OS's and computers and it does a great job of transfering from VHS to DV. You do need an inexpensive firewire card. I have about the same situation and are working on the best setup. So far I like transfering with WinDv to the HD, then encoding with TMPGEnc and authoring with TMPGEnc Author. For LP tapes I will probably use 1/2 DI (I believe it's called) to conserve space on the DVD as the quality is already pretty low.

[g_shocker182]

Pinnacle MovieBox has two version:

1) Connection thru IEEE1394
2.) '' '' USB 2.0 (faster than IEEE1394)

[FulciLives]

What I am about to say is somewhat debatable but for the most part you are not going to get more than 4 hours on a DVD recordable

You can get more than 4 hours on a DVD but then the quality is really going to suffer.

So get it out of your head THIS INSTANT as far as putting a single 8 hour or even 6 hour VHS video onto one DVD

It ain't gonna happen.

You would be better off to split the 6 to 8 hour tapes over two DVD-R discs.

Either that or wait for the next great generation of DVD burners. It is possible that burning to a dual layer disc MAY be possible sometime next year. Then you could get 8 hours on one dual layer DVD. Also the blue-ray DVD burner will probably have double the capacity of a dual layer DVD so again no problem but that technology is a long way off. Your VHS collection is NOT going to suddenly die and crinkle away in the next couple of years if you decided to wait.

My point is ... don't do it now if you don't want to "do it right" and doing it right mean putting no more than 4 hours on a single DVD-R disc.

And in my opinion even 4 hours is pushing it. You are better off keeping it around 3 hours.

As far as an input device goes you might want to consider the AverTV Stereo PCI card. It works wonders for me. If you have the money then you might want to try the Canopus ADVC-100 since it has an audio lock feature that might be handy if you intend to capture 6 to 8 hours at a time. But you will need a VERY large HDD for that and if you will be capturing SLP/EP speed tapes then you will also need a TBC (Time Base Corrector). DataVideo makes an excellent one for around $300

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[clem2270]

I want to thank you all for the replies.

But I am curious if anyone has worked with the ConvertX box from Plextor. Their ads claim that with the included support for MPEG-4 compression that you can put 10 hours of video on a DVD.

Has anyone worked with this box? Has anyone seen the video output from the resultant DVD that this device will produce? I am interested in the difference between the VHS tape video compared to the final video output from this device.

Also, can anyone direct me to where to find information on how to calculate the space (Mb's per Minute)used by: an uncompressed VHS video stream VS. MPEG-2 compressed video VS MPEG-4 compressed video.

Thanks for your help

[rhegedus]

Once you've got the equipment sorted, this should give you a few tips on encoding:

https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=127563

[Duchess]

But I am curious if anyone has worked with the ConvertX box from Plextor. Their ads claim that with the included support for MPEG-4 compression that you can put 10 hours of video on a DVD.

That's true, but at this moment in time there is very, very few DVD players that will play mpeg4 files, and I doubt that any player in your household will be suitable. Not unless you have purchased one within the last 3 months and have been very lucky to get one that will play them.

[clem2270]

If you have the money then you might want to try the Canopus ADVC-100 since it has an audio lock feature that might be handy if you intend to capture 6 to 8 hours at a time. But you will need a VERY large HDD for that and if you will be capturing SLP/EP speed tapes then you will also need a TBC (Time Base Corrector). DataVideo makes an excellent one for around $300

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

Thanks for your input. I have another question for you though. If I get the Canopus ADVC-100; will I still need to purchase a TBC also? What kind of problems will I have if I don't use a TBC and try to encode a EP recorded VHS tape?
Also, I don't know if I can ask this question or not, but here goes. I'm sure that some of my VHS tape collection have the Macrovision copy protection. What kind of software or hardware do I need to get to "by-pass" the Macrovision, so that I can archive my collection?

Again, thanks for your information.

Jim

[clem2270]

I would like to thank everyone for putting up with my questions and giving me the advice that you all have given.

So, with everything you have told me and my continuing research; it looks like that I will start saving up for a Canopus ADVC-100.

But now I need to find out what else I need to buy, that will make my upcoming task as painless as possible (without breaking the bank or maxing out my MasterCard).

So, far; I know that I will need to purchase: a multi-format DVD burner and a larger HardDrive. But I don't know what else I will need. Do, I need to purchase a TBC? What combination of software should I use? to Capture, to edit (add menu's, etc), to convert/compile, then to finally burn final product

Would I be better off using a dedicated Firewire Interface card or will the Firewire port on my Creative Labs Audigy card, be good enough to run the ADVC-100. When I get ready to purchase a DVD burner (Multi-format) which model do you think standout as being the best performer?

I'm planning on setting up all this video project hardware on my 3rd AMD XP based computer system. Currently it has a XP1700+ processor and 1.0gb PC2100 ram w/Windows XP pro. Would it be worth my while to upgrade the processor to the motherboard max of a 2200+ processor? Or, would I be better off to install more RAM into the system?

Again, I want to thanks all of you for sharing your knowledge.

Jim

[Hazza]

clem2270,

Seeing as you have 4 high end computers I am thinking you probably have a Digital Handycam? If so and its fairly new it should have analogue to digital passthrough conversion which you can use instead of the ADVC-100. Like the ADVC-100 both devices will strip the macrovision off as you capture.

If you dont have a digital handycam then the ADVC-100 is the way to go in my opinion. I have tested both with a camcorder and with the ADVC-100 and not needed a TBC as yet (some EP recorded tapes). I am in PAL land but I don't think that will make any difference.

Hazza.

PS - I must agree with FulciLives with regards to 3 hours per disk. Any more and I start to get the feeling the whole process is not worth doing.

[clem2270]

Hi, all

Its been a while since I have stopped by and looked this site over. Been busy with work and attempting to build a higher-end PC.
I have finally assembled a really nice P4 3ghz system; purchased a nice VCR (w/s-video output); got a Canopus AVDC "box"; and also a Plextor multi-format DVD burner.

So, now I am interested in finding out what software I will need to acquire to help make my archiving process as painless as possible.

I have just purchase a couple of programs from 3 2 1 Studio's: DVD X copy (gold) and DVD X maker.

I am interested to find out what everyone else likes to use, problems you have had, and any other suggestions you might have.

In the meantime I will do more research and see what I can findout for myself.

Thanks

[rhegedus]

Vegas Video to capture
TMPGEnc to encode
TMPGEnc DVD Author to...... author
Nero to burn

[clem2270]

Hello everyone;

Well now that summer is gone and our winter rains have started ( I live in the Pacific Northwest ). I have started to spend time working on figuring out a process for converting my VHS tapes to DVD format. I have finally figured out a system that works for my personal needs.

Here is the current hardware that I'm using for my video conversion process:
JVC HR-S2902U VCR
Canopus ADVC-100 (firewire connection to PC)

computer consists of:
Intel P4 @3.0ghz
Intel MB D865PERLL
1.0gb Kingston PC3200 (Dualchannel mode)
MSI FX5500 8x AGP
Creative Audigy sound
Western Digital 60gb system/OS drive
Seagate 160gb SATA storage drive
Plextor PX-708a DVD burner

Primary software used.
Windows XP pro SP1a

Windows Movie maker (used for initial VCR capture and tape editing)

DVDSanta (used to convert the Movie Maker file to DVD format; then used to burn final output to DVD-r media)

I'm using Movie Maker to capture at DV quality settings, after a complete tape has been captured, I then run through the capture and chop scenes as needed. I also edit for run time; splitting for approx 1hour & 50minute runtime.
I know that this is probably not the best way to convert formats; but for me its about as easy as I have figured out. I'm currently not interested in creating DVD bookmarks; my main purpose was to convert my video tape collection to DVD format.
A few months ago I did purchase the TMPGEnc suite of programs, but was kinda overwhelmed by the complexity of the whole process. I have also tried a couple of the other highly recommended programs; but for what I wanted to do, they were just too complex.

So, hopefully this information will help someone else who is interested in persuing this endevour. Feel free to leave comments or to ask any questions.