Starting out

[Mayer]

OK,

I have finally decided to do something with all my home vhs tapes and get them onto dis, either as DVD or Divx. I am competent at doing this once the files on on my PC however, any feedback on hardware would be appriciated.

I have an old MiniDV cam (Sharp Model) but it has no pass through facility. My PC has about 100gig of space for me to use, but the PC is only a P4 running at 2ghz which seems to strain and take forever when encoding.

WHAT SHOULD I PURCHASE...

New DV cam with passthrough facility...???
Capture card (any comment on models would help)

Am I right that a DVD recorder would do the job?, ie play the vhs onto TV then record to disc? (not to bothered about menu's

Ideally I would want the files on the PC as DV avi then encode to Divx because some of the tapes I have are 4 hours long.

I reckon a upgrade to my PC is something to consider as well

[anitract]

A lot of people use some sort of DV transfer solution, but if you are tight on space you might want to use an mpeg capture device of some sort. (Even so, a drive used only for capturing probably would not be a bad idea.)

I just started capturing last year. I ended up with an ATI All-in-wonder 9600, but as many can testify...they are touchy cards. If you are tech-savy it's not a problem, but if not, you may want something else. Once you do find a good configuration though, the capture quality is excellent.

[Mayer]

Thanks for that, whilst I am thinking of getting a new DV Cam I was thinking, or wondering, if using the pass through facility would be the simplest way of transferring my VHS tapes to DV or just buy a dvd recorder to do the job?

[anitract]

I think you might be a little confused. Yes, using a passthrough will give you DV on your PC; however, using a DVD recorder will give you a DVD with mpeg-2 coding, which would need to be ripped to your PC if you wanted to edit it. Of course, DV and mpeg-2 are very different.

If you are going to be doing heavy edits with your captures many would suggest going the DV route. I like mpeg-2 because that is the format I want my files in in the end. Had I decided on a DV solution, I would have to encode my captures to mpeg-2 (which is perfectly fine, but more time than I have).

[anitract]

If you do want to go the DV route...

...there are alternatives to camera passthroughs. You could get a Analog To DV Converter. Canopus makes several forum favorites (the ADVC-100, and ADVC-50, for example).

...I'd consider getting new DV Cam IF you think you might be upgrading cameras soon anyway. If not, a Canopus is a good choice (I almost bought one).

[harley2ride]

IF you don't want to spend all the money on a Canopus, I use the ADS Pyro, and I know others who use the Plextor external capture devices with excellent results for quite a bit less money. I paid $80.00 for my ADS PYRO AV/LINK and it came with a decent software package (ULEAD).
If you want to see comparisons on these devices, check out www.videoguys.com. They are a professional video editing site.

[Mayer]

Thanks for the tips.

I know I need a new camera, since upgrading with SP2 the Sharp has a problem sometimes being recognised but, as I have a large amount of VHS tapes, mostly of the kids when they were young, family holidays etc, and not that bothered about editing the footage (mainly because I edited out the rubbish when I put them to VHS, would it not be better to buy a dvd recorder???
Only negative I can think of is that some tapes have nearly four hours on them, however I am not sure on how much time you can cram on a DVD disc using a DVD recorder.
Aside of that I was thinking of the camera route to obtain an end result of mpeg 2 then encoding to Divx so I can get more video on disc???

Am I going down the right route here.....???

Thanks again for your comments

[jtoolman2000]

Am I right that a DVD recorder would do the job?, ie play the vhs onto TV then record to disc? (not to bothered about menu's

If you don't need menus you should go that route. Otherwise you will need to edit your analog captures in a non linear editor, encode the results to MPG2 and author in any authoring package and burn to DVD. Forget divx unless you have a player capable of plays such files to your TV.

[anitract]

I agree. Forget about divx, unless you don't care about big quality drops.

Who says you have to put an ENTIRE 4-hr tape on one dvd? Just do half. And then put the other half on another DVD. DVDs are soooo inexpensive right now, this should not be a problem.

It sounds to me like you want a relatively painless solution...so I say go for a DVD-recorder or mpeg-2 capture card. Either way is pretty darn easy. DV is somewhat "bad" because you must encode the file to mpeg-2, which takes time...which is bad if you have many many tapes.

[Mayer]

Thanks guys, plenty of food for thought. By the way, I do have a Divx player but I suppose using the transfer to two discs to keep quality would make sense.

I understand that some DVD recorders will allow a nominal amount of editing (some with menus), sure would save time sending all that DV avi to my hard drive, creating menus, encoding, then creating a DVD disc.

[SatStorm]

I'm able to put 4 hours of VHS tape on 1 DVD-R. Needs filtering, adjustments and good equipment to succeed it. An enchancer, a good capture card, good cables... A fast PC....
Yes it is worth it, but don't expect more than 1 VHS tape per day (pc run on 24 hours basis). Of course, I'm talking for perfect results, the ones we want for our precious projects.

A far faster alternative is a DVD standalone Recorder. Transfer your tapes using it and later, when you finished, you can do compilations / etc on your PC (rip the discs, linear edit what you wish to keep, re-encode bad segments with filters if needed, etc).

[Mayer]

Thats what I thought, doing the encoding /menus etc would leave my pc on meltdown, but, is the quality good using a dvd recorder, some people i have spoken to say the quality is garbage....to a degree.

[anitract]

There are a handful of standalone recorders that are absolutely loved around here. I can't remember exactly which recorders (you'd have to do a search), but some of the sample caps/clips I've seen posted show (IMO) results better than nearly anything else around here.

[Mayer]

Many thanks....

Lots to think about.

[lordsmurf]

There are a handful of standalone recorders that are absolutely loved around here. I can't remember exactly which recorders (you'd have to do a search), but some of the sample caps/clips I've seen posted show (IMO) results better than nearly anything else around here.

JVC
Pioneer
LiteOn

For 4-hour, JVC.
For the others, 3 hours max.

A great many machines are only good in 2-3 hours, and they start to deteriorate in image quality after 2 hours.

[TBoneit]

I'm only familiar with the New Pioneer 531 Recorder. But it can do extremely accurate edits if you don't mind taking 2 hours to burn a 2 hour video. Or GOP accurate edit are ok, In my case they are, burning a 16X -R then takes about 8 minutes.

The Edits go quick, Titiling is pretty easy. I can capture a 2 hour VHS adjusting colors, brightness, sharpness and more ahead of time with the JVC and after capturing to its hard drive trim start and stop, title and burn in about 2hours 15 minutes total. If a TV show where I need to edit out commercials add 5 to 10 minutes.

Hope this helps?
I gave uip on the computer capture except for problem tapes due to the time required.

Cheers