Guide to create a decent DVD from XPERT DVD2USB capture

[parkay2]

Lessons learned capturing video using Kworld’s Xpert USB2DVD device also provided is a guide from this lesson. First let’s look at my suggestions for system requirements:

Pentium-4 2.4 GHz processor ~ Windows XP ~ 20 gB’s free disk space (7200 rpm drive) ~ 512 MB ram ~ USB 2.0

Capturing a 2 Hr video can be a challenge as most commercial DVD’s have about 7 Gigs of data on them, but DVD+R’s have 4.7 gB’s

The XPert USB2DVD Device comes w/ Honestech’s DVD Plus package. The capture software is pretty good, but that’s about it. I’ve captured w/ MPEG-1 and burned a VCD which came out okay. I’ve captured w/ MPEG-2, encoded the capture w/ a number of the freeware encoders w/ poor results. However, w/ Honestech’s capture software you can capture to DVD-NTSC. However, I haven’t found an encoder that recognizes the capture, but I’ll show how it can be done w/ decent results. Also, when I select anything but “fastest” encoding speed the capture becomes jerky.

I captured a 2hr video set to DVD-NTSC. Then using Sonic MyDVD 5 Deluxe, I configured the audio to transcode to Dolby Digital (this saves disk space for Video). Next using the “get movies” tab I browsed for my DVD-NTSC capture and imported it. The red burn button will gray out as the capture will be too big to fit on one disk. Next make a folder in windows and I called mine DVD_1. Next in Sonic save your project in the DVD_1 folder and call your movie, for example, movie_1. Next under the “tools” menu select “make DVD folder”. Browse to the DVD_1 folder and image your video. The image takes quite a while, and oh, make sure you have selected in preferences that you want best video quality and Digital Dolby audio. Walk away from the ‘puter and take a good break. When the image is completed, then you must run the program DVD Shrink to reduce the size of the video to fit on one DVD+R 4.7 gB disk. Again take a break, once this is accomplished, then the option that I used to burn a disk is this: Use ImgTool Classic 0.90 to image the video again to the hard drive in a new folder of your choosing. One of the settings in ImgTool is to browse to where the .exe application file is for DVD Decrypter. Of course, saying this, you must have the DVD Decrypter program on your computer. When ImgTool finishes imaging the video, it launches you directly into DVD Decrypter to burn the disk. After this procedure you should have a compliant DVD video.

Note: Not counting the capture device and capture software the only non freeware software used was Sonic MyDVD 5.0 Deluxe. Also to note: If a video is much larger than 2 hours, it may pay to pause the tape about half way in and stop the capture then save it as video part 1 and then record the rest using a new capture. Personally I don’t plan on going overboard with this, but I have a number of short sports tapes that I’d like to preserve, vacation video’s, etc… Good Luck from a newbie!!!

P.S. Maybe one of these days I’ll opt for a PCI capture card and a second hard drive, but right now my computer is still in warranty!!! Hopefully, too, one of these days they’ll come up with larger capacity DVD+R disks!

[dvdwally]

have you done any vhs to vcd, if so, how'd it do?