Patience running thin, please help with advice.

[Diversion]

I've soon had it with capture cards that don't work, with XP issue this and Graphic card driver issue that and so on.

I'm tired of tech supports that don't answer mails or their forms and companys that don't give a shit once you forked up your hard earned cash to buy their products.

All I want is to get my F1 races on DVD. They are on VHS (PAL) of varying quality. Now I'm thinking of buying a Standalone recorder such as Philips DVDR70 and simply copying them over. Is this a viable option, is quality acceptable when copying from VHS? I've read tests that claims quality is really good with the 2 hour recording setting.

Of course I realize that you might get better result if you know what you're doing but I have hundreds of tapes and simply don't have time to find "the ultimate quality solution"

Anyone tried this and can tell me the results?

[mkelley]

I've never tried it with PAL (NTSC land here) and never used the Phillips (Panasonic recorder here) but I can tell you the quality of VHS transfers in my neck of the woods is *very* good: I can't tell the difference between the transfer and the original.

If you don't need fancy menus and don't need to edit there is no better way to transfer VHS over to DVD (some of the higher end Panasonics allow for RAM editing, but I've never used them). It's quick, easy and the results are superb. And nowadays the cost is reasonable (in my world it's around $500 US for such a recorder).

[Diversion]

Thanks for the info, would it be better to pay more for a model with harddrive or would it be a waste of cash?

[Gazorgan]

XP is not what most people think. If you want better reliability you run W2K. XP is for the consumer, despite the corporate version.

Having said that, you appear to be having hardware issues. Don't get all-in-wonders. Don't get USB 1.1 devices. Some of the best capture cards are the cheap $29.95 (US) cards that do it all in software. I really reccomend shopping around. The DVR works, but is very pricey. Find a store with a good return policy and keep trying.

[ktnwin]

You can always try the standalone recorder for a week, if you do not like the result then you can always return it.
At 2 hours recording, the quality is near original quality, can't tell with my eyes (on a big screen TV).
I just personally do not like the stupid menu/chapters generated by the standalone recorder. Other things I do not like: when recorded on DVD, you always record a little more or less than you really wanted. Most likely, you will record some blank parts of the tapes. It's annoying when watching a DVD recorded that way. You cannot even place chapters where you wanted, it's automatic by the recorder.
However, nothing beats the standalone to transfer VHS tapes to DVD in term of quick turn around time.

[Diversion]

Okay, thanks for the advice guys. I think I'll look around a bit maybe there's a good deal around.


And Gazorgan I don't think I can use a cheap card with no hardware encoding since i fear my CPU isn't powerful enough.

[Craig Tucker]

Don't get all-in-wonders.

Well I like my AIW 7500, admittedly they do take a bit of time to get set up right, but once they are they're great.

[txpharoah]

XP is not what most people think. If you want better reliability you run W2K. XP is for the consumer, despite the corporate version.

I would agree with this statement. Win2K is much more stable and user-friendly as compared to XP. However, I'd not call XP consumer software. It's equally crappy for both consumers and businesses. XP is NOT multimedia friendly, especially with video.

Having said that, you appear to be having hardware issues. Don't get all-n-wonders. Don't get USB 1.1 devices. Some of the best capture cards are the cheap $29.95 (US) cards that do it all in software.

I would have to disagree with this statement...

Admittedly, it may take a few days to get an ATI All In Wonder up and running smoothly, but the quality it puts out is almost unsurpassed on the sub-$200 consumer market. Anybody thinking that an AIW card is a pain should try installing a Canopus dvstorm or Matrox or another pro card. Yikes!

And those cheap $30 cards are just that: cheap. The software that comes with them often does not inform you of sync issues or dropped frames. And the quality of the card's video is mediocre at best (lots of gamma and chroma distortions). ATI AIW software informs you of dropped frames, and the diag tool will inform you of proper audio sync with the soundcard.

Most external devices, whether USB 1.1, 2.0 or Firewire, are a recipe for trouble. Only a few of them work with any kind of decency, and the software and codecs (which you are normally stuck with, and cannot change) isn't all that great.

But to answer the original poster's question, yes, a standalone may be your best bet if you are fed up with computers. Just realize the quality options and menu options are not as grandiose as a studio on a computer, but you can still do a decent job, and it will look just fine.

However, be warned, as a standalone does not mean it will be any easier, as many people I know waste a few discs trying to fidget with settings and understand the recorder.

[mkelley]

Boy, do I NOT want to get into this argument -- let's just say that I'm stating the opposite side "for the record" and leave it at that.

XP (pro or home) is a superb operating system, far better than W2K for *any* use, multimedia or not. I've been running NT since 1.0, and XP is the first NT to finally get it right -- luckily they rewrote most of the kernal and vastly improved compatibility with other versions of Windows but more than that, they finally addressed the problems we NT professional users have had for years running witches brew of esoteric hardware and software that would be far less than stable.

W2K (which I still run on my laptop) was a good step in the right direction, but in no way compares with XP in nearly any benchmark you care to make. Unless you are running strictly MS applications on it you might as well forget performance and compatibility. I never recommended W2K to any of my friends, whereas I can recommend XP without hesitation.

And as to external capture devices -- I can't speak in generalities as Mr. TX does here, but I will say that my Dazzle Hollywood analog to digital firewire convertor works superbly, has never dropped a frame in its life, and is something I'd recommend to anyone who needed this kind of device.

Now I'll stop watching this thread -- because I do NOT want to participate in OS wars (I've fought my share of them for the last 25 years or so -- don't need to enlist again :>)

[LanEvo7]

XP is not what most people think. If you want better reliability you run W2K. XP is for the consumer, despite the corporate version.

I've never had an issue with XP Pro. It runs very stable. I haven't had much video problems with it. You just have to watch what codecs you are installing. Some people just use Nemo's codec pack, which in itself have problems.

Having said that, you appear to be having hardware issues. Don't get all-in-wonders.

AIW cards are ok. I have one and it does my captures well. The thing about them is, its attached to your video card. So it might cause issues if you want to upgrade just your video card.


Back to the original subject. Use the drivers that came with the video card. Do not upgrade to the current drivers. Then capture, convert, author and burn.

[Gazorgan]

Stir the hornets nest!!! LMAO.

Lest we all forget, W2K was horrible when it first came out. Nothing ran on it. After 2 years, most apps have been re-written and run on it fine. XP has the same problem, older apps doin't run worth a darn. I have to support 170 sites that run 95-XP, and by far the #1 nightmare is XP and older software.

As to the cheap cards versus the AIW, WTF chip do you think they use? You don't use your stereo speakers to record a song, why do people insist on using their video card to capture movies? Boggles my mind. Do a search on the AIW consol issues and codec limitations (not to mention macrovision issues). I stand by my statement that a good BT chipset card can give you quality as good as it gets for capturing. If you got a P4 or an Athlon it's not an issue. I rarely go over 30% cpu on an Athlon 2400+.

[txpharoah]

Boy, do I NOT want to get into this argument -- let's just say that I'm stating the opposite side "for the record" and leave it at that.

That's fine. We can agree to disagree. My findings, as well as that of my company, are that WinXP is unstable.

I've been running NT since 1.0,

What are your talking about? The first "NT" system was Windows for Workgroups aka Windows 3.11. The upgrade was Windows NT (NT4). The next upgrade was Windows 2000. And the most recent one is Windows XP Pro.

XP Home has some NT features and functions stripped away, making it an impotent "bastard" version for home users. "Bastard" meaning it is an unsavory combination of Win32 and WinNT technology, and often very flukey towards the drivers of multimedia devices and its codecs.

I've never had an issue with XP Pro. It runs very stable. I haven't had much video problems with it. You just have to watch what codecs you are installing.

XP Pro is probably fine if you watch it carefully.

I just didn't like it. It would crash when Win2K would not, and for me, that was annoying. And the "pretty" user interface was disgusting (for my tastes), not to mention it became a bit harder to troubleshoot due to the way they buried some functions of the OS.

AIW consol issues and codec limitations (not to mention macrovision issues).

What are you talking about? I can capture any format with my ATI AIW card and it looks as perfect as the source (sometimes better if using the VideoSoap in MMC 8.1 or MMC 8.5). Many cards have Macrovisions "errors". All you need is a good TBC, which will clean the picture, stabilize it, help reduce dropped frames from bad source, AND strip out the Macrovision (which is merely an articificially inserted video error) all at once. It's not as if ATI squeezed an extra function on the cards. Look at them: they're huge in size compared to other cards. Why? Because it has so much on the board that fully supports both video and graphics.

[fmctm1sw]

This is good stuff... I have a cheap wintv card and I feel it does a fine job. One thing you have to be careful about is tweeking setting such as "lock video stream to audio" or something like that. Virtualvcr has some settings like that you can mess with to get the audio to stay in sync. Takes a little patience but it works OK for me.

[Diversion]

The thing is that the manufacturers support almost invariably sucks

I do a lot of different things with my computer and I simply don't have the time to be an expert in one particular area even if I find it amusing to play around from time to time.

I got an answer from support: "Try another video card" I mean WTF?!!
I paid for this, it claims to be compatible with XP so it should damn work! And if it doesn't I expect help from support.

To me this is akin to buying a spoiler kit from Kamei for my Volvo only to find out it doesn't fit and get told by Kamei: "Oh we're sorry why don't you just buy an Audi and see if it fits"

Ok, end of rant.