Total newbie needs help converting VHS to DVD! Many many questions.

[Mr. Snrub]

I have about ten old (c. late-80s early-90s) VHS cassette tapes of home video footage that I wish to transfer to DVD (or preferably to .avi or .mov or .mpg files that can be stored on my hard drive and then burned to DVD using a DVD burner). I have next to no knowledge about this kind of stuff, and I would like to know exactly what equipment do I need. I have many many questions that need to be answered:

Please note that as these are home videos of family footage taped from a camcorder, I am the sole owner of this footage and therefore this is 100% legal to do, right?

OK, now let's get to the questions:

1. How can I attach my VCR to my computer? These are the two VCRs I have in my house:

Toshiba W422
Emerson DA-4Head

Both really old. Do I need to buy a new VCR? Do they make VCRs nowadays with USB ports?

2. I am currently shopping for a new laptop computer. What are the minimum hardware and software requirements to make this work? Do I need an IEEE 1394/FireWire connection? Dells don't have FireWire, so should I get a Gateway? How much free hard disk space do I need? Is 80 GB enough? What Operating System do I need? Any general recommendations?

3. Once I have successfully converted the VHS tapes to acceptable video files (avi or mov or mpeg), what kind of DVD burner and DVD burning software will I need? Will that VirtualDub program that I keep hearing about help me?

4. Will the DVDs that I burn be able to play on, say, my Sony PlayStation 2? Will they play on the cheap $50 DVD player I bought at Circuit City a couple years ago? I notice that there are two acceotable formats for DVDs: + and -. Is that something I need to be concerned about?

Any other help is greatly appreciated.

[kschang]

1) You need a video capture device, which is either an internal PCI card, or an external USB device. VHS machines are too cheap to have USB interfaces, unless you're talking a pro-grade editing deck that costs $1000 or so.

2) FireWire is nice to have if you have a camera that has the same port, so you don't have to go to tape and keep the signal digital. As for HD space, plan for 1 GB PER MINUTE OF FOOTAGE, at the bare minimum. I'd double or triple that to be absolutely sure.

3) DVD actually use MPEG2, not AVI or MOV or whatever. If you store in AVI/MOV you have to reencode to MPEG2, which introduces additional concerns (and signal loss)

4) If you burn a "standard" video DVD it should play fine. The + and - should not concern you, as that's just media.

Indeed, most of these questions are already answered on this forum, just not in a single place.

[redwudz]

A good place to start for learning about what you need is our FAQ page: https://www.videohelp.com/faq

And welcome to our forums.

[Mr. Snrub]

1) You need a video capture device, which is either an internal PCI card, or an external USB device. VHS machines are too cheap to have USB interfaces, unless you're talking a pro-grade editing deck that costs $1000 or so.

OK, so do the VCR's audio and video output jacks go into the video capture device?

2) FireWire is nice to have if you have a camera that has the same port, so you don't have to go to tape and keep the signal digital. As for HD space, plan for 1 GB PER MINUTE OF FOOTAGE, at the bare minimum. I'd double or triple that to be absolutely sure.

So are you telling me that transferring my ten video tapes (each 120 minutes of footage each) means I have to have a hard drive that has 1200 GB = 1.2 terabytes of free space in order to store my footage?????

Indeed, most of these questions are already answered on this forum, just not in a single place.

Well, most of the stuff I see on this site has to do with DVD and TV stuff, not VHS stuff, so I thought I'd ask.

[Mr. Snrub]

I'm looking on Ebay for a video capture device. Will this work? It's the Hauppauge WinTV PVR USB2 TV Tuner (which was the first result I got when searching this site for "video capture device").

[grossjamesh]

I have transfered over 100 vhs tape to mpg and then DVD using the Hauppauge
WinTV PVR USB2.0
I capture with the Hauppauge WinTV2000 SW and the author with TDA. Works great.

[redwudz]

Yes, your VCR outputs, audio and video connect to the capture card. S-Video is a bit better, but those VCRs are a little more expensive and the capture device would need to have s-video inputs. If you planed to do a lot of this, you would probably want a TBC (Time Base Corrector) to stabilize the signal. But they are about $200US or more.

Concerning hard drive size. Figure about 3 times of the captured file on your hard drive for edits, encoding, etc. When you are done, you delete the files and start on the next one. A 200-300GB hard drive should be plenty for most setups. You want this to be a second hard drive, separate from your boot drive for video usage.

Two other methods which may have already been suggested are using a DVD recorder or using a DV camcorder with passthrough and using a FireWire card in your computer. There are also standalone DV converters, but they are also in the $200 or more price range. If you had a friend with a DV camcorder with passthrough that would loan it to you for a few days, that's another option. You won't be recording, only converting.

Capture cards come in all types. Some of the easier ones to use are the Hauppauge cards. They do hardware conversion to MPEG-2. The MPEG format is a little harder to edit, but you wouldn't need to encode to be able to convert it to DVD format. http://www.hauppauge.com/ The 150 model, their most inexpensive does OK, but the next models up have better quality and more features. And they can capture TV video, so they have others uses besides just VHS>DVD conversions.

EDIT: The USB Hauppauge device should work fine for what you need.

[ricoman]

Why in the world would you need 200-300gb of HD space to process this? Doesn't make sense to me, even DVD movie processing only needs 10gb. Although I do, how many people really have 300gb drives in their computer?

[jtoolman2000]

Get DVD Recorder. Attach VCR to it. Record directly to disk. Done!

I you need to edit them you should go the capture card / computer route.

[Barnabas]

Mr. Snrub,

You are much better off getting something like a Canopus DV converter, or you can use a DV camcorder that has inputs too. Lots of noise in VHS, so some filtering is usually required. Transferring VHS to DVD is harder than it sounds, as sync issues abound with many transfers. You will also need a decent VCR, preferably one with a TBC.

The Hauppauge in the link does real-time MPEG encoding, so no way to filter unless you capture, and re-encode. I own the PCI version of that same unit. Nice unit, but I never use it now, as I prefer more control over the ease of use.

While a DVD recorder is one option, it does not allow enough filtering options to really clean up poor videos.

Good luck!

[anzimike]

I'm with jtoolman2000, especially if you have no computer video processing experience. You can get standalone for $100 and capture vhs direct to dvd. These will be playable in most modern players. You can do basic editing and reauthoring on computer if desired, using much less HD space and much less headache and learning curve. And ricoman, yes it takes a lot of HD space to process avi video. I'm in the process of editing some concert footage (legally, I was asked by the artist to video for him), and feel constrained with two 300gig satas in addition to 120gig boot/program drive. 1 hour at 10 to 20gig (compressed avi) or 80 to 100 gigs (uncompressed avi) adds up very quickly.

[JohnnyMalaria]

Why in the world would you need 200-300gb of HD space to process this? Doesn't make sense to me, even DVD movie processing only needs 10gb. Although I do, how many people really have 300gb drives in their computer?

Mine is outside(!)

Why in the world do I need such space? Well - 15 x 1 hour DV tapes from a safari that I want to edit into a final <30 min video. I need all the footage on the hard drive at the same time. 1hr is approx. 12.5GB. That requires at least 187.5GB.

[LOWTECH]

Well you don`t need 187gb for 15 x 1 hour DV tapes.

Each file I capture is a avi file around 13gb per hour, when captured I render as an mpeg2 file reducing the file size to around 4gb per hour. Then delete the 13gb file and so on untill your job is all captured into the computer ... End result is 15 x 4gb = 60gb needed. Plus the amount needed to render a finished amount of DVDs say 20gb. .....100gb less than 187gb

Been doing it this way for years, with brilliant results.

[JohnnyMalaria]

Well you don`t need 187gb for 15 x 1 hour DV tapes.

Each file I capture is a avi file around 13gb per hour, when captured I render as an mpeg2 file reducing the file size to around 4gb per hour. Then delete the 13gb file and so on untill your job is all captured into the computer ... End result is 15 x 4gb = 60gb needed. Plus the amount needed to render a finished amount of DVDs say 20gb. .....100gb less than 187gb

Been doing it this way for years, with brilliant results.

Well - I do.

I need all the footage accessible to decide the final edit. A 200GB drive is so cheap. I can just dump all the footage on there and start the creative part of the process instead of trimming stuff etc etc. Yes - I used to do it your way years ago when HD storage was prohibitively expensive.

Capturing then rendering to MPEG2 before editing is not the recommended way. Especially if my final destination is not DVD.

[INFRATOM]

Dvd recorder is the easiest choice from tape to dvd. if you don't want to spend too much consider Polaroid dvd recorder at walmart.

[Oscar wallace]

VHS to cheapo DVD recorder use rewritables then stick them on computer use TDA to edit and burn to DVD thats the way I do it,capture card my arse.

[IraB]

I am using a standalone Panasonic DMR-ES30V. I've had it for almost a year and have had great success dubbing VHS tapes to DVD.

The DMR-ES30V has one button dubbing. After it finishes dubbing, you can decide whether to add more tapes ot the DVD, whether you want menuing, and more.

It is all pretty painless compared to using a computer. And it seems foolproof, which, for a fool like me, is a must.

I would recommend the Panasonic DMR-ES30V or similar standalone dubbing recorder to anyone who does not have extensive experience or understanding using a computer to move their videotapes to DVD.

IraB

[Epicurus8a]

It sounds to me like your best option is a standalone DVD Recorder. A good one costs about the same as a good capture device, and you won't need any additional software. Best of all you can use your computer while the DVD Recorder is busy recording.

I use a Pioneer 420H-s to record audio/video to it's internal hard drive. Before burning to disc I can perform simple editing on the Pioneer hard drive itself. If I feel the need to perform sophisticated editing, I'll rip the DVD (created on the Pioneer) to my computer hard drive and edit as I see fit. Be aware though, editing on the computer can be a bit daunting if you don 't understand things like: codecs, frame rates, bit rates, resolution, etc.

Good Luck!