VHS Xfer editing questions

[NorthStar7]

I decided to bite the bullet and digitize my old (20-25 years) VHS tapes. I picked up a used Panasonic AG-1980 and a Canopus ADVC-110 to do the transfer. I first tried to use my wife's iMac but I found iMovie '08 to be pretty useless. So I moved on to using my WinXP laptop with Premiere Elements 3.

My plan is to capture all of my tapes and leave most of them in AVI files. I may author a few to DVDs now but for the most part I think I am going to wait until BluRay burners/media come down in price so I don't need to compress as much.

Anyway, my questions...

1) Is there a quality difference between capturing to DV files on Mac versus AVI files on Windows?

2) If I am capturing on Windows, does it matter what program I use? It seems like MovieMaker is a little easier to use to do the capture but I don't know if PE does a better job. Is there another program out there that is better?

3) I noticed in the PE help it said you should have a 7200 RPM hard drive. My laptop has a 5400...does that really make a difference, am I going to drop frames?

4) I have found that using the TBC on the AG-1980 really helps the video quality. However, the captured video usually has some flickering on the very bottom and very left. What is the best way to edit out that band of flickering?

Thanks!

[lordsmurf]

1. No.

2. Use WinDV on Windows

3. It can. See if frames drop.

4. You refer to overscan. Read these
- http://www.digitalfaq.com/guides/video/capture-understand-sources.htm
- http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/showthread.php/errors-edges-converted-315.html

[NorthStar7]

Thanks lordsmurf. WinDV sounds like exactly what I am looking for. As for the overscan, I noticed the noise on the bottom was not visible on my 42" plasma but the noise on the side was. Perhaps my HDTV is off center a little bit. I will look into that before going down the masking path.