What format to capture VHS and 8mm tapes

[Subhash]

I understand by reading these forums that VHS and 8mm tapes are VCD quality. Would it do any good if I capture them in DVD quality or I would just be wasting disk space by doing that.

I have a whole bunch of tapes which I want to capture and then put them on to DVD. Someone please suggest the best approach.

Thanks.

[ozymango]

Well, "VCD Quality" is sort of a ballpark figure in terms of resolution of VHS and 8mm video, but even then that doesn't take into account a whole bunch of variables. I would say that the best VCD quality is like good VHS ... but again, lotsa variables.

That being said, I can see no reason to save as VCD spec because the only thing you'd be saving is file size and when you can get a blank dvd (4.7gb) for pretty much the same cost as a blank CD (700mb), and you're just gonna get better image quality with mpeg2 compression, I'd definitely say you want to save to DVD spec.

What are your master tapes like? Are these home videos or commercial or both? I'm guessing you want the best image and sound quality so DVD is the way to go. This is assuming you don't have the file space to save as full AVI files. Also important: DVD sound gives you much better quality in WAV mode or even AC-3 compared to MP2 audio that's VCD compliant, and I know that 8mm video used PCM (hi-quality) sound even way back when, so for the highest audio fidelity DVD wins again.

Do you already have some kind of capture card? What are your $$$ and time issues? If you're just going for straight save-to-DVD then you might wanna look at a DVD recorder, just input your VHS and 8mm video outputs to the DVD recorder, press Rec, and voila, that's it. If you're planning on doing any editing, it depends on how much and what kind of editing you're into that might sway this to capturing as AVI to your computer and then going from there.

Let us know a few more details about you particular situation and we can help more!

[edDV]

VCD is a compromise, go for DVD and use 720x480/576 @ ~6-7 Mb/s for important original tapes (e.g VHS-C, 8mm camcorder originals + more for Hi8) or 352x480/576 @4-6 for other good quality stuff.

Now this is for data on DVD. Capture is a totally different issue and depends on your capture method.

For volume low end priority material, you just can't beat a standalone DVD recorder for efficiency.

[Subhash]

Thanks ozymango and edDV.

These are all home videos that I am going to capture. I think I will go with DVD HQ capture (720x480 NTSC). Would that work ? I have enought space on my HD as of now (about 180 Gig) so I could even go AVI if that will make it even better. As this is going to be one time exercise, I want to put best quality on my DVD's. At the same time, I also think that may be I should go DVD SP which will let me write 2 hours of video on a single DVD. That way I can have one DVD for every 8 mm tape (remember 8mm tapes used to be 2 hours long as against 1 hour for Mini DV tapes). I would certainly prefer to keep one-to-one ratio between tapes and DVD's so I don't have to split a tape into two dvd's. Please advise the pros and cons and how much will I be trading off.

I have Sapphire Radeon x600pri VIVO card and my old Sony CCD-F70 camcorder, which I plan to use to capture. Will that work.

I just did some test with my camcorder and computer and I am having problem seeing a clear picture on the computer screen with Power Director 4. When I press Play on the camcorder, I can see on the screen that some movie is playing but can't see anything at all. It looks like a dark movie with lot of red where the faces are. Rest everything is all black. The picture appears to be moving vertically, something like when you feed PAL signal to an NTSC TV.

Can you please help to fix this problem before I even go any further.

Thanks again for your help.....