Help! DVC or DV-Bridge for VHS to VCD?

[Rasiroth]

I currently have a Dazzle DVC to capture and test for about 20 days before I lose the option to return it.

Here's the deal...I have an Inspiron with the follwing specs:

Inspiron 8000
256 MB Ram
PIII 900Mhz
Win ME
20 GB 4200 RPM HD

I'm required to have a laptop for my major, and I want to transfer my VHS to VCD with minimal or no loss.

1)I'm thinking of purchasing a SVHS VCR, but will this increase capture quality of standard VHS tapes?...on Dazzle DVC and/or Hollywood DV-Bridge?

2)I have the option of using the firewire Dazzle Hollywood DV-Bridge if I do a return, but I'm concerned with HD speed and file size. How big would a 2 hour DV file be??? Is the extra $100 worth it?

I want to archive my VHS collection with little or no loss. Some tapes are great VHS, others are old EP recordings of rare shows.

Will the DV-Bridge allow me to capture without quality loss from a standard Hi-Fi VCR?

Also, can I simply capture at VCD res with the Dazzle DVC at about 2000K/s rate and encode down to get VHS quality VCDs without blocks?

I have so many questions. All I really need is an entirely external capture solution that will allow me to archive my VHS collection onto VCD with little or no quality loss.

Please help.

-Rasiroth

[Deathwish]

DON'T BUY THE DAZZLE - It's has a horizontal syn problem if you use the composite video

input. I've read a review (http://www.insanely-great.com/reviews/dazzle.html)
that said the problem didn't occur when using SVideo inputs. However, the problem was also

resolved for the author by cycling through the mode button on the unit. This didn't work for

me. Dazzle claims it only occurs with poor quality tapes on Macs only. Well I used a good

quality new tape with a dell 700MHz PIII & I have the same problem.

It may be that you do not experience the problem with S-video inputs but why not buy the

Sony DVMC-DA2 instead for $349.99 for J&R instead (1800-221-8180, item# SON DVMCDA2).
It's in the same price range & won't have the H-sync problems.

[Greg12]

What kind of encoding are the sony's.

CPU based or On board encoder.

[ironwood321]

Apart from using a bridge there are some other options worth considering.
1) Getting hold of a DV Cassette Recorder and dubbing your VHS or S-VHS cassettes to this and input this into you firewire card.
2) Getting an analogue card get Avi-io and Mainconcept.com DV codec. With analogue capture you need a fairly fast machine but this option seems to work well. You could also use the huffyuv codec if you have a bit more space and adequate processing power.

With this method you can use virtual dub and external smart deinterlace or resize filters I mentioned in a previous post to correct interlace problems.

If your video is fairly old and might have poor sync it might be an option to borrow or buy a TBC (Time base corrector) or FS (Frame Store) and then output this from your analogue source to your computer.

There are 2 mpeg encoders you could use Panasonic Mpeg or TMP encoder and they deliver a fairly decent quality. You might find Panasonic will preserve more colour than TMPENC when using NTSC DV at 4:1:1 compared to PAL at 4:2:0

The DV recorder might be the best option as you won't be concerned to much with input data rate as you can control the feed compared to analogue. Plus you can send you output to tape for archiving without loosing HDD space.

DV codec this will consume data (10minutes of data would be captured in a little over 2GB That's about 3.6MB/persec) if 10mins = 2GB 1hr = 12GB.

When you do your major make sure you use some industry type software like Avid. Not Premiere.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: ironwood321 on 2001-08-31 02:47:40 ]</font>

[Deathwish]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-08-30 13:30:43, Greg12 wrote:
What kind of encoding are the sony's.

CPU based or On board encoder.
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

On Board encoder. You can't go wrong with the Sony.