VHS to DVD-R

[dead_indian_walking]

Waht program/method is best to to put VHS tapes t DVD-R using PC. I have 300 VHS tapes

[alstatr]

300?????? Holy crap! You wanna convert all of them?

Man I thought I had alot at 25. Hahahaha

Anyways....

I haven't been able to do it yet because I think I have problems with macrovision and the ATI hacks don't work for me . But if I were you I would check out http://www.digitalfaq.com Lordsmurf has done a great job making the guides there.

Post back here to let us know how it is going...

[cbkilner]

I'm not sure that you'll want to use your PC for that many tapes/DVDs unless you NEED to do alot of editing.

I'd invest in a good standalone DVD-recorder, like a Panasonic DMR-E20.
After you transfer your 300 tapes, sell the recorder to get most of your $ back.

[SatStorm]

You have 3 choices

The easy way: A DVD Standalone recorder.
Easy to use, fast, good (not excellent) quality (IMHO, others find it amazing). But only 2 hours per DVD that way and if the tape is really bad, it is even less (1 hour). Also, those standalone recorders have excellent built in filters and TBC, which may do a difference for this kind of convertion.

The hard way: Analogue capture with PC
Complicated and difficult, needs plenty of time but is the top quality solution you have. It needs a good modern PC (the higher CPU the better (for encoding) and keep in milnd that HD never is enough...). It is a proccess that needs to capture to avi, post proccess that, encoding it to mpeg 2, author it to DVD stracture and then burn it to a Disc. You need time, patience and you also have to be good with PCs overal, since you gonna need to get your hands dirty occacionally. Plus, you have to investigate what to buy, before going to the shop. This is because not all the capture cards are the same

The typical way: Realtime capture to mpeg 2 with PC
This is like the previous one, but you have time benefits: You capture and encode to mpeg 2 at the same time, so you don't need to capture to avi, filter and convert to mpeg 2. You have to author and burn to discs, which takes time, but not so much. With this method it is neccessary to have a good VCR, with TBC if possible. You can convert 3 hours of good condition VHS tapes per DVD-R that way, with quality pretty close to what a DVD standalone recorer can do in a ~ 1.30 hour mode. I mean, it looks better 2 hour but less good 1 hour. Be carefull - if you choose that root - on your hardware: You need NEW 10bit capture chips cards so to have quality and sharpness for your projects. Also keep in mind that you need a capture software for this (I suggest mainconcept 1.4.2 for this, but there are plenty others, - most of them in a cheaper price but inferion - in my opinion - results). Many people around, gonna suggest you ATI cards for this, which is a semi - good suggestion: ONLY the LATEST (expensive) cards are good for PAL users and you have 2 problems: Macrovision (hacks exist but don't work for anyone) and you gonna use ONLY the ATI official capture program (MMC, ask lordsnumf about it).
Myself suggest nvidia capture cards for realtime capture and third party software. Those cards are amazing for us, the PAL users, in my opinion always. Finally, I don't suggest cheap BT8x8 cards for mpeg 2 realtime capture, only for analogue one.

If you have pattience, you know about PCs in general and you have time to offer on this, go the PC way. If you simply wish to convert your tapes to DVD, go the standalone root.
It's your choice!

[bmiller]

I have used an ATI 7500,iuvcr with huuffyuv and picvideo jpeg codec to capture.No dropped frames.The less editing you have to do do the better.Audio sync can be a problem if you do a lot of editing.
You have a lot of work ahead of you this route and 300 tapes,but it can be done.I tried the ads 2.0 mpeg capture module.It works fine.It saves the avi to mpeg2 conversion.I don't use it anymore,as all my tapes are on dvd.If you are interested let me know through this forum,and i will send you a pm in regards to selling it.Cheap i must say.

[victor010170]

Some thign I've learned and want to share.

I use Sony digital camcorder with pass-through function. Why camcorder? Cause I do not have capture card and have camcorder, but it work.

1. Connect vcr to camcorder with rca cable (provide by sony)
2. Make sure no tape in cam.
3. connect cam to pc with firewire. Do not use usb 2.0, the qa is better with firewire. I had tested.
4. Use windv (free software) to capture into pc.
5. Use vurtualdub to fix color, sharp frames, etc...
6. Use tmpgenc 2.5 to encode and finally burn with tmpgenc dvd author.
(Step 6 can be used with other softwares)

1st time I did, the movie was bad due to no edit, and bad vcr. 2nd time, I used filter in tmpgenc and movie 75% improved. 3rd time, I edited with virtualdub. Movie 90% improved. I also tried on walt disney movie (2003 movie) which believe to have macrivision and movie comes out fine. All you need is time, alot of it.

[flaninacupboard]

connect cam to pc with firewire. Do not use usb 2.0, the qa is better with firewire. I had tested.

I think you can safely ignore the USB2.0 comment. it doesnt make any difference what transfer method you use, the files coming from your camera are identical.

[bugster]

connect cam to pc with firewire. Do not use usb 2.0, the qa is better with firewire. I had tested.

I think you can safely ignore the USB2.0 comment. it doesnt make any difference what transfer method you use, the files coming from your camera are identical.

Yes and No. The data coming from the camcorder is identical, that bit is true but with USB you have less capture options.

A Colleague of mine purchased a DV camcorder (I believe it was a JVC) recently and was getting very poor quality caps via USB2. The only way we could find of capping was with the included software which was encoding to wmv, no way to stop it, and the quality was poor, even for wmv. A small investment in a firewire card and cable later, DVIO to the rescue, perfect captures. Of course he then found he needed a new HD too!

YMMV.

[lchiu7]

Just some data as food for thought. I recently converted one 90 minute VHS tape to DVD. The times

1. Realtime capture using a DC10+ card and Pinnacle Studio 7 - 90 mins
2. Conversion to MPEG2 (fixed bit rate, one pass) using Athlon 2400+ - 130 minutes (here something like a Athlon 64 would make a difference)
3. Authoring to DVD using DVD MF - 15 minutes
4. Burning to DVD using Nero (2.4X DVD+RW) 25 minutes

Total - 260 minutes or over 4 hours. Multiply that by 300 and you will be busy for a while

[TheFamilyMan]

With 300 tapes, definitately look into buying a DVD recorder. Get a model that has a TBC (time base corrector) and noise reduction, like the Panasonic E series (costs from about $300 US to huge amounts of money). The TBC removes picture jitter/wobble/shaking that is very common on old VHS tapes. This jitter isn't noticable when you watch it on a TV, but the resulting digit conversion will show it in spades. Also, you will probably need a macrovision (copy protection) remover to go between the VCR and the recorder. There's are few popular macrovision removers mentioned in the forums (do a search) for around $50 to $100. Another good thing about the DVD recorder is that you can use it like a VCR to record TV programs so you can dump that VCR once your conversions are finished.

[nelson133]

The easiest way to do this is to use a canopus advc 100 to dump the video into your computer via a firewire port. There is freeware capture software that saves the output as an avi file (WinDV is the one I sometimes use) which can then be converted by any authoring program. The cabnopus box also has a macrovision removal function.
If you are interested in speed, I sometimes use mediostream's dvd program, VERY fast transcoding, but with limited (no more than 6) chapter insertions and limited quality choices. You can use it as a capture and transcode and burn program and have the whole process take less that 2&1/2 hours. One last trick for improving quality with this setup is to record the video to the hard drive with mediostream's highest quality and then use dvdshrink with deep analysis to reduce the video to dvdr size.
I have done a lot of videotapes and these methods have worked for me.
Nyah Levi