VHS to Digital

[Juc1]

Dear all

I have one old home movie on one VHS tape and another two on another tape (total less than 30 minutes). I want to digitise them so I have three movie files on my hard drive (ie raw and unedited) which I will then edit them and burn to DVD. There are many places that offer to convert VHS to DVD so I could then rename the VOB files to MPG which would then be my 3 master files. Can anyone please tell me which file format would give me the best end picture quality - for example would it be better for me to find somewhere that will convert my VHS to AVI rather than to the DVD file structure (VOB etc)?

Thank you

Juc

[Juc1]

Having seen this thread I am wondering I have a mini DV camcorder so should I ask them to transfer my VHS to mini DV tape?

By the way I don't expect to be doing much more VHS to transfer so I am going to pay someone to do it rather than do it myself with my present kit (picture quality not great) or buy more kit.

[yoda313]

Check to see if your dv camcorder has "analog pass through". That will allow you to hook up analog sources and transfer them in realtime to dv-avi on your computer. Since you already have the dv camcorder I'm assuming you are already using firewire to connect.

That way you can convert them to dv-avi using the dv codec that came with your camcorder. You can do this yourself as long as the camcorder has the input option.

Otherwise you could ask around to borrow a dv camcorder that does have the pass through and transfer it that way.

Just remember it will be about 13gb/hour just like regular dv.

[Juc1]

Check to see if your dv camcorder has "analog pass through". That will allow you to hook up analog sources and transfer them in realtime to dv-avi on your computer. Since you already have the dv camcorder I'm assuming you are already using firewire to connect.

That way you can convert them to dv-avi using the dv codec that came with your camcorder. You can do this yourself as long as the camcorder has the input option.

Otherwise you could ask around to borrow a dv camcorder that does have the pass through and transfer it that way.

Just remember it will be about 13gb/hour just like regular dv.

Thanks for your help

I don't have DV input Anyway if I gave it to a professional is this all he would do ie connect VCR to DV input, press play on the VCR and record on the camcorder? What about the VCR quality - does that make a difference?

Thanks

[yoda313]

Sorry I don't know because I don't have dv. I'm just aware of the options.

It would be best to get it converted to dv-avi so that way you have the most options for converting. Plus you'll have better editing with the dv-avi as opposed to mpeg2. You will have to convert the avi to dvd afterwards however.