Newbie help with VHS to DVD?

[frooshfreak]

I am looking for the easiest and fastest way to turn my VHS tapes into DVD's... I am VERY new at this whole thing, and I would appreciate any help anyone can offer. I have a ton of tapes that i would like to burn to DVD. I just want to get from point A to Z without making a lot of stops along the way. No need for chapters, menus, whatever, just the movie.

I have an ATI TV Wonder VE, a Duron 900 processor with 640 MB Ram, 140 gig of hard drive space, and a Sony DRU 500ax burner, windows XP. Software i have: TMPG, DVDit PE, Nero, Nero Vision, ATI MMC 7.9, Pinnacle studio 8.0, Adobe Premiere 6.5, and that is about it.

Can anyone offer any suggestions? Software I should be using? I just want to get this stuff done so I can start doing some FUN stuff!! My girlfriend is getting impatient, and my room is full of these tapes (my little corner of the apartment)!!

Thanks everybody!!

[fmctm1sw]

Someone named txpharoh (or something like that) will post here in a while and give you a link. You can set you watch by it......

[wthess]

An easy and simple way??? Well, that's only a theoretical situation. Depends upon how much money you want to spend. If you want to spend less than 100, go with Ulead MovieFactory, Pinnacle Studio, or some other comparable package that will allow you to capture, edit, create menus, render and record to DVD. All of it is time consuming and all have their quirks. Ulead MovieFactory seems to get good reviews here.

If you have more money to burn, check out Vegas Video, Ulead Video Workshop, or other packages. Most of these run in the 300-500 buck range. Vegas Video gets good reviews here.

Keep in mind that any simple solution will generally be at the cost of quality and/or flexibility.

[tumbar]

You already have what you need.

I think Studio 8 can do it all. Capture, convert, burn. I understand that the application requires some working with and that it is sometimes buggy.

An application which I have heard good things about, "Bob W" I think, is neodvd. Suppose to be easy app and it costs $50 for the "plus" version. Any of the all in one programs will work and they are all around $50.

regards

I just did the same, made a disk from a "made for TV movie" with video studio 7 only I cut out commercials and added chapters.

[spidey]

Everything you need to see is located in the sections to your left

Your Method to accomplish what you want to do -

Step 1 - Capture
Step 2 - Encode
Step 3 - Author

Reveiew the guides to the left, to help you with looking into various softwares. Alot of what you wish to do can be accomplished with freeware (ie VirtualDub for your capping and editing, then authoring you'd need to invest in)

[macleod]

if you are just wanting to cap and burn to DVD easy and wont come back here asking how to make the quality just like the tape, moviefactory2. It has a real time encoder on it. It'll cap, author and burn in a few mouse clicks.

[rhegedus]

1) Capture with Virtual Dub
2) Edit into managable pieces (i.e. chapters) using Virtual Dub
3) Encode to mpeg using TMPGEnc
4) Author with whatever you feel comfortable with.

The beauty is that all the software needed is either free or has a usable demo.

[Marco33]

Someone named txpharoh (or something like that) will post here in a while and give you a link. You can set you watch by it......

You scared him off.

[rhegedus]

Maybe, but you can learn a lot from him.

[frooshfreak]

Thanks for all of the good ideas...

i guess my biggest problem right now is time to let TMPGEnc work...

i am looking at 8 hours for a 90 minute video!! i have shut down or disabled almost everything on my computer...

Is this just the way it is? Will buying a faster processor help much... say a 1.5 gig athlon xp instead of my 900 duron? cut the time in half?

And by the way, thanks again!!

[ckdexterhn1]

Well, if you are looking for quick and fast, buying a standalone DVD recorder would work, especially if you're not worried about fancy menus and such.

I have a Panasonic E50, and I think it's the greatest thing in the world! I can record a VHS to DVD in the time it takes to play it. I can still rip it to my computer, add menus and chapters using an authoring program, and then burn the new DVD. Quality is great!

[housepig]

frooshfreak -

try an app like PowerVCR or NeoDVD, capture direct to mpeg-2. That way you don't have to re-encode, you just have to author and burn.

I've had NeoDVD projects where I've captured a 1 hour film, then compiled a simple dvd and was watching it in my standalone 10 minutes later - 70 minutes after I pressed "play" on the vcr.

Quality was not bad, either... I get better quality going to .avi and then reencoding, but it wasn't terrible capturing with NeoDVD.. just a little "soft" image-wise. I got more clarity and crispness the other way.

Although, I have some beta tapes that are turning to mush, so I'm going to cap them direct with NeoDVD, as the quality is not going to get significantly better the other way - garbage in, garbage out. And it will be much faster...

[vance43211]

the neodvd idea above was a good option. it quick. but use another program to capture as your audio and video will be off sync, then use neodvd to burn(it is blazing fast as it use the hardware encoder built into your capture card).

hey fellas i am about to do what frooshfreak is doing and i want to know what is the best capture program out there for just capturing video straight to mpeg 2 with no editing or reauthor to sometime else

i have neodvd plus (audio video sync probelems), power vcr II(they break the movie into 20 min segments), uleads video studio 6 (they like to record my mike's input with the movie sometimes. the capture a/v is on sync, but the burn programs a/v sync is off), roxio dvd builder (a/v sync problem), pinnacle expression(it don't recognize capture card ) and pinn studio 8 which i uninstalled from computer and Mydvd (which i've never installed it )

i usually use uleads studio 6 to capture, neodvd to burn

i would probaly use studio 8 but i don't know how to set the output as mpeg2
(i didn't like the quality of their .avi file unless u set it to the highest setting and that takes too much hard drive space). if any of you can answer that mpeg2 setting i would appreciate that

is Mydvd any good ?

is there any good freeware capturing programs on this site?

any help is appreciated

[Bob W]

I use an AVer capture card that comes in a program called AVerDVD EZMaker and sells for $39 or so at CompUSA (I got it for $10 on sale). I then use NeoDVD Plus to encode which is rocket fast and does a fantastic job. Finally I use NeoDVD Plus again to burn to DVD+/- RW using my Sony DRU-500AX burner. The video quality is always as good as the VHS tape and the audio is dead on.

BTW I have a piece of hardware between my VCR and capture card called "Video CopyMaster" which filters, amplifies, levels, and gets rid of Macrovision or sync problems. This device sells for $39 at BestBuy.

[buttsy00]

I am new to this too.... What Hardware do you need to capture the VHS tape on to your computer?

Any help would be appreciated guys.

[Bob W]

I am new to this too.... What Hardware do you need to capture the VHS tape on to your computer?

Any help would be appreciated guys.

Most use a dedicated capture card or a TV card which will also do video capture. Some video cards from ATI will also do video capture.

[macleod]

An earlier poster mentioned powervcr. You can use it and it is a good real time encoder (you can get it for about $5-$10 off of ebay), however, you will need to use an app like TMPGENC or something to upsample the audio since it will only cap at 44.1 mhz and dvd requires 48. Other than that, it is a good app. I have used it for quite awhile to cap TV programs and some home movies.

I finally gave up (before I bought a DVD burner) as the quality wasn't perfect and I was capping at 2520 and 352x480 res to make CVD's. They looked good for real time caps and something to go right from cap to burn.

If you don't want to reencode, your low end real time encoders wont give you great quality, but you wanted fast.....

[vance43211]

powervcr wasn't that bad . but some times one of the 20 min segment would be lacking audio that why it isn't my favorite capture program

[vance43211]

what is TMPGENC?

[rhegedus]

It's a program used to encode various film source files to VCD, SVCD or DVD.

See here

[ktnwin]

I have lot of success with neoDVD Plus too (like Bob W), converted more than 50 VHS tapes to DVD in no time.
However, neoDVD has a few limitations:
1) only 6 chapter points per movie clip (no limit on # of movie clip as far as I know)
2) only have 3 bitrate levels (best, better and good), only the best level fits my taste in term of video quality and you can fit 92 mins video on one disc at this level. The other too levels look like crap to me.
3) does not support half D1 resolution (352x480). This is what I really want from neoDVD since it will allow 3 hours with excellent quality (same as original VHS tapes) on one DVD disc.

Hey mediostream, do you hear my wish ? Give me half D1 capability.

[txpharoah]

Someone named txpharoh (or something like that) will post here in a while and give you a link. You can set you watch by it......

The time is currently 8:15 p.m. CST.

The link is in my signature. 8)

[vance43211]

me, i personally don't like neoplus (i have theupgrade version which is actually a little better than the regular version on the sync problem) on the aver dvd capture card because the a/v sync is a little off. it almost like watching old chinese flicks with the american language

somebody on this site told me how to hack the registry for power vcr to capture a whole movie on one file, instead of the 20 min segments it usually does, so i now use power vcr to capture, then neodvd to burn (as long your captured file is on sync, neo dvd will burn it in sync. they just have problems capturing)

[txpharoah]

I personally dislike neodvd4 for it's lack of options, and dislike WinDVR and PowerVCRII because the MPEG2 it captures is blended deinterlace. Yuck. Neo also looks bad below the highest quality settings.

ATI users are lucky to have the MMC to capture high-quality interlaced MPEG2. Not sure what to tell everybody else. I guess to capture AVI and convert later.

[Bob W]

For the record I have never had an audio sync problem using NeoDVD Plus version 4.1 and I can't see much difference on a VHS capture from using the best and better quality settings. I was capturing at the best quality then if the file was over 90 minutes re-encoding back to the mid quality but I soon learned to just capture at the mid setting which results in a DVD file that looks ever bit as good as the original VHS IMO.

[vance43211]

there a slight a/v sync problem. most people won't catch it with the eye. but i do. example u will hear a man say nothing and 10 milliseconds later u will see him say nothing

now that isn't as bad as a/v sync problems as a lot of programs. but it's is there.

roxio dvd builder does the same thing

but like i said, if u capture it correctly, neodvd will burn it correctly

p.s. even neodvd knows they have a/v sync issues that's was suppose to be fixed in the next update (but they said that 5 months ago)

[Bob W]

Hmm I must have a 10 millisecond delay in my brain that makes the audio come out in sync.

[vance43211]

u said it , i didn't

because as i said, neodvd know about a/v sync issue as they said it would be fix it in their next update

some people notice attention to detail, some don't