Analog to dvd quality question

[FRAGenSTEIN]

Is it possible to take analog, convert it, then burn it to DVD and have
it look as good (with the tools available on this site) as the tape
being played through the VCR? I saw a comercial that depicted a person
take a VCR tape, after capturing it do some hocas pocas with the
"puter" then the "puter" spit out a DVD. Said person feeds the DVD to
the DVD player and throws away the tape. I have no doubt that I'm
missing alot when it comes to converting analog. If it can be done,
I'll keep digging, get the right equipement, software ect. If I could
get booted in the right direction... A professional service is not out
of the question, but I would like to do it myself. Thanks to all that
nurture the newbie!! Alan

[bugster]

Yes it can be done and should not be all that difficult with modern equipment. You will obviously need some form of capture card. My personal reccomendation would be one of the recent DV capture devices but others will surely differ.

Convert to mpeg-2 with TmpGenc, probably using CVD resolution.

Author to DVD with almost any of the consumer level authoring apps around and then of course you need a DVD burner. Just make sure you select one which supports a media format that your standalone is happy with. See the DVD players list on the left to check this out.

Hope this helps.

[FRAGenSTEIN]

Thank you! I have the Pioneer Ao4. With the " take me by the hand " guides on this site, I can back up dvd movies to dvd-r so well it's almost routine. But this takes more knowledge. I will learn.
Lets see, capture it as uncompressed as possible in avi, then convert it to mpeg-2 720 x 480 with the normal bitrate for dvd. Author it & burn?
OR, could I get a gizmo that converts it to mpeg-2, then author?
$$$ is not tooo much an issue when it comes to getting this done. The best consumer capture device, if cce is the best, I'll get it.
bugster, what would u use? Thanks 4 your time, I'll take a deep breath and dive back in. Alan

[twodogs]

Frag,
I'm a fellow newbie whose been reading similar questions to yours.

To assist your process it might pay to browse:
http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=127563

Hope this helps !

[Mxjshaf69]

Hi Frag,
I was looking at your computer details and i noticed that your OS is Win98SE. That would mean that your hard drive's file system is Fat32, not NTFS. The problem with Fat32 is there is a 4GB file size limit. If you are going to be capturing in uncompressed then you are going to have file sizes over 25-30GB. If I have got this right then what i would do is buy a USB mpeg-2 capture device that converts the movie to Mpeg-2 before sending it through the usb cord and onto your hard drive. If your hard drive does have NTFS make sure to stay away from these. I have one(even though i have NTFS) and it works well, but i had a lot of problems to get it to work right. Another thing, CCE is not a capture device, it is an encoder. I would not recommend you use this(it cost 2000 USD), i would use TMPGenc to convert your movies. I hope this helps you out.

[bugster]

Lets see, capture it as uncompressed as possible in avi, then convert it to mpeg-2 720 x 480 with the normal bitrate for dvd. Author it & burn?
OR, could I get a gizmo that converts it to mpeg-2, then author?
$$$ is not tooo much an issue when it comes to getting this done. The best consumer capture device, if cce is the best, I'll get it.
bugster, what would u use? Thanks 4 your time, I'll take a deep breath and dive back in. Alan

I cant really comment more on which capture card to buy, there are so many on the market these days and each has its plus and minus points. I would recomend avi capture and transcode to mpeg-2 if best quality is what you want. I personally would also reccomend TmpGenc as the encoder. In terms of quality it is (IMHO) as good as CCE and with a decent PC (esp dual processor or hyperthreaded) is not much slower, though I am sure plenty would disagree!

All in one solutions that capture, transcode and author tend to produce lower quality results and have less felxibility than a set of several specialist tools used properly. Having said that some of the more recent releases are pretty good from what I hear and do have a shorter learning curve.

[FRAGenSTEIN]

I will purchase win xp. Just trying to get all my ducks in a row before I invest $$ & time. I will give my Asus 7000 deluxe (gf2 32mb ram with s-video in) a try and go from there. I want to thank you all for taking the time to help me (& others that read this thread). Cause it's people like you that make this site happen. Happy Holidays, Alan