best way to capture realtime mpeg2?

[dcguy918]

I have a lot of old videos that are beggining to degrade, and have started to capture some onto DVD with a Dazzle capture card. However, it takes almost half a day to capture/encode the file for DVD. I'm wondering if anyone can tell me a good good capture card that would capture the video is realtime mpeg2 so I can burn it to a DVD right away. I have tried programs like Ulead movie factory to capture realtime, but doesn't support my card, gives me some weird error about copyrights. I am not so concerned with the quality, but am about time. Thanks in advance for any help.

[Tommyknocker]

Ulead products, like Video Studio 7 can capture in DVD MPEG-2 format. It has a 30 day trial period.

[lordsmurf]

And your cards is a .... ?

[redwudz]

Cost a few $, but you could use a ADVC-100 or similar and Mainconcept encoder. Convert VHS directly to MPG2. If no editing is needed, author with TMPGEnc DVD Author and burn to DVD. Can't get much easier.

[andkiich]

Find an ATI All In Wonder card. I can capture full D1 MPEG2 with no dropped frames.

[Jayhawk]

Can you tell us a little about your system (cpu, memory amount, hard drives). You may need a hardware capture and encoding solution like a Haupagge PVR-250.

[dcguy918]

Thanks for all the post guys. My current capture card is a "Dazzle Hollywood DV-Bridge". My system is a P4 2.8C (hyperthread) and I overclocked it to a 3.2ghz. It also has 512mb of Dual Channel PC 3200 DDR ram, and a regular 7,000RPM ATA/100 200gig Hard drive. I have tried Ulead Video Studio 7 before, and gave me an error about Copyrights after around 2 minutes of capturing realtime mpeg2.

[Ruude]

MPEG-2 usage needs to be unlocked somehow..
This only applies to the US. Nowhere else...

[petar]

Since you have a lot of tapes, don't want to spend a lot of time on it and you're not too concerned about quality, you should consider a DVD recorder (if it's not outside your budget).

[Craig Tucker]

Sounds like for what you want to do (direct transfer from VHS to DVD, no menu's etc) a DVD recorder may be the way to go.

[dcguy918]

I thought about one of those, but a bit out of my budget. I am wondering if there is some kind of cheap capture card or software around 100-200$. Thanks for all the help though.

[teegee420]

My vote is for an ATI All-In-Wonder. Head over to pricewatch.com and click on "cards- video"(not capture). The 7500(which I own) through the 9600 are well within your price range.

[stackner]

if you must capture direct to mpeg-2 then go download POWERVCR-2 it can capture direct to mpeg-1, mpeg-2, vcd, svcd, dvd, ect. i used it a lot. but i have learnt as many people have that it is best to capture to AVI then convert to MPEG. even on tapes i dont want to edit i do this as my end quality is better than straigh mpeg capture unless i want a 30 mins clip to fill a whole dvdr.

[Manokat]

ATI AIW for direct software encoding. Plextor ConvertX 2 for direct hardware encoding.