SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS TO CAPTURE AND WRITE TO DVD

[cltyers]

I want to capture VHS and TV to my PC and write to DVD. My system has no capturing devises and only USB 1.1 ports. What do I need to upgrade to achieve my aim. My system details are as below.
Intel Pentium III 650 Processor
15.28Gb Hard Disc
Generic Floppy Drive(3.5")
Main circuit board 694X-686A 128MB Memory installed
128 Mb SDRAM
32Mb TNT2 M64 Graphics
Sound Blaster compatible audio
Windows 98SE
56K PCI Modem
Nero 6 Software
Pinnacle Video Editing Software
TEAC DV-W50E CD Rom drive
USB 1.1 Ports available

[westlaw]

Dude, don't even think about it!

You may be able to capture and burn some nice quality VCDS with your computer set up.

You would be the 'poster boy' of 'dropped video frames' and out-of-sync audio trying to capture DVD quality material on your system.

Ideally, you want to use a much faster processor for DVD capture. I 'd say at miminal, a P4 1.7

For a capture card, depending on the quality and budget you are working with, ATI All-In-Wonder video cards might serve you will.

Great luck!

[junkmalle]

Without major system upgrades your only hope is to get a capture device with hardware MPEG2 encoding. Something like the Hauppauge WinTVR PVR 250 (about US$150).

Even with that you'll be limited to how much (ie, now many minutes of video) you can handle because of your limited disk space. If half your disk space is free you might be able to handle an hour or two at a time. That is, capture an hour of video, burn it to DVD, delete the files, capture another hour...

Any editing you do will be painfully slow. Not to mention MPEG2 isn't the best choice for editing. If all you're going to do is clip out commercials you'll be OK.

Hauppauge also makes a USB 2.0 device (~US$200) which you could use. But you'd still have to open up your case and install a USB 2.0 card. I'm pretty sure Win98se supports USB 2.0.

[trossin]

My system was about like yours and it worked great for VHS to DVD. I have a PVR-250 MPEG2 encoder capture card. Since a DVD holds 4.3 Gbytes you will need to have over twice this free space on your disk or you will only be able to make less than full DVDs.

Your biggest problem will be Windows 98. It has a file size limit of 2 Gbytes so you will not be able to capture any file bigger than 2 GB. The software with the capture card splits the file but I found that the split had a gap.

If you are willing to capture just 1 hour segments or TV shows, Win98 will be just fine. When you create a DVD there are no files greater than 1Gbyte so it is possible to author a full DVD on Win98 as long as the individual movies that are on the disk are less then 2 Gbytes. I have done it. It works.

Minimal upgrade:
1. PVR-250 PCI (~$100-$150). I think a USB 1.1 version will work as well

Better:
2. WinXP upgrade (~$90)
3. 60 to 80 Gbyte disk (~$50 to $60)

For your application a faster CPU will buy you next to nothing. The data rates are not that fast and the chance of dropped frames is very low as long as you get an MPEG2 capture device.

4.3 GBytes/2hour playback or capture rate ~= 4300MB/120*60s = 600KBytes/second. USB 1.1 can do about 1MByte/sec so life should be ok.

My process for VHS or TV to DVD is:

• 1. Capture using the WinTV application that came with the PVR-250
  2. Author using Ulead DVD MovieFactory (I upgraded to version 2.0)
  3. Burn the DVD.

There is no recompressing of the video (no need for fast CPU). I setup DVD MovieFactory to not convert compliant files and it takes it about 10 to 30 minutes to produce a DVD.

As always, if you need an excuse to buy a new computer go ahead. If you don't want to spend a lot of money but be able to convert VHS to DVD it is possible. You will need a capture card even if you buy a new computer so I would start there and see how it goes. For me it worked great and I still use my 600 MHz machine. I just bought another disk drive and upgrated to Win-XP. I am happy with it.

[thecoalman]

IMO it would be worthless to upgrade a computer like yours for capturing. The reason why is simple, for the price of the upgrades you will need you could just buy a new computer which would be far better yours if you upgraded it. Your best bet is to look to some of the bigger manufacturers when there running one of those specials. You could buy a whole system for nearly what the cost of the processor was a year ago or more.

[Capmaster]

IMO it would be worthless to upgrade a computer like yours for capturing. The reason why is simple, for the price of the upgrades you will need you could just buy a new computer which would be far better yours if you upgraded it. Your best bet is to look to some of the bigger manufacturers when there running one of those specials. You could buy a whole system for nearly what the cost of the processor was a year ago or more.

Agreed. You're at the bottom end of what you can possibly do with even hardware capture. Using a 650 P3 would make me nervous as hell, for the reason given about dropped frames, sync, and just plain HD space.

Any serious upgrade (>2 GHz) will mean probably a new MB, and the HD has to go. You can get a good deal on even a starter system with 80 or 100GB HD and a P4-2.8GHz or so.