Advice on capturing vhs to create a dvd?

[DupMJ23]

I want to take my old vhs movies and capture them onto my computer to edit and burn to dvd.
I want to know the best external capture device i can buy and if there is any suggestions on software to edit and encode the movie.

Thanks

[wwjd]

I have been converting my old family VHS to DVD for about the last 1.5 years. Currently, I use a JVC S2901U VCR hooked to a Canopus ADVC-100 (This does the analog to DV conversion) and uses a firewire to transfer the DV data to my HD. The DV file is Type 2 AVI with a file size of
about 13GB per hour of video. The file size is large but is easy to work with. I do my video editing and authoring using Ulead VideoStudio 8.

I like the external encoder because it takes the burden off my CPU. I also like the ADVC100 because it locks the audio with the video, no audio sync problems later on. If you old VHS movies the ADVC will also defeat Macrovision so that you can back them up on DVD.

The Ulead VS8 is stable, easy to use and produces a good result.

wwjd

[nelson133]

I have done many videotape to dvd conversions. The best capture device id the Canopus AVDC100 in my opinion. It captures without any audio/video synch problems, and can also defeat macrovision copy protection, important when coping your commercial tapes. Poor quality tape, black and white tape, it copies them all, though your product quality will depend n the quality of the tape. I also use it for tv captures.
Your movie will be captured in avi format at 13 gig per hour. It then must be encoded and authored. Everybody has a favorite proigram for this, I have tried several and they all have their pluses and minuses. I suggest that you do a search of this site for more opinions.
Frameserving with virtualdub or avisynth will allow you to use filters to improve your ouitput. You can also resize to 352x480 to improve the quality at any given bitrate. This is still better that the native vcr resolution and I have found it works very well. Nyah Levi