Archiving VHS on DVD - computer or stand alone recorder?

[ScottAJJD]

Hello.

I have lots of old home movies on VHS, 8mm, etc. The material dates from the 1970's to today. I want to archive everything to DVD, and I want to know the best way to do this. By far and away, my primary concern is quality - I want the archived DVDs to be indistinguishable from the original source material. (I don't have oodles of time on my hands, so I'd like to keep things relatively simple as well. But, I would sacrifice some simplicity for higher quality.)

I currently have:
-Canon DV camcorder
-computer w/ DVD+R/RW burner and plenty of hard drive space (see my profile for more details)
-firewire card

I am willing to buy almost anything - I'm not too concerned with price (I'd like to keep it under $1,000), but I'd like to keep things as simple as possible while maintaining the highest quality conversion possible

Some ideas I had:

1. Purchase a Panasonic DMR-HS2 stand alone DVD recorder. Convert the analog signal to DVD with the DMR-HS2, and then make copies of the DVDs using my computer.
2. Use the analog pass through feature of my DV camcorder (and my firewire card) and capture the video to my hard drive.
3. Buy a capture card.
4. Buy a stand alone DVD recorder (other than the DMR-HS2) and follow the steps in #1.

My questions:

1. Which of the above options would yield the highest quality conversion?

2. Is there any difference (in quality) between the video captured by a high end capture card and the DVD produced by a stand alone DVD recorder conversion?

3. If a computer-based conversion is the way to go, what capture card and software would you recommend?

Thanks in advance for any advice or suggestins!
-Scott

[yg1968]

Since you already have a digital camcorder with a passthrough feature.
1-Use your passthrough feature to capture your VHS tapes to your computer with Windows Movie Maker (or Dazzle DVD complete)
2- Use TMPGENc to encode
3- Use, for example, Dazzle DVD complete to author and burn the DVD (they have a trial version that you can try)

If you find this too timeconsuming, you can buy a standalone DVD recorder. But I would give your existing equipement a shot before investing more money into it. The DVD recorder option is quicker but the quality isn't higher.

See this website for more info:

www.dvdplusrw.org

[rubberman]

One thing i thought about getting is the Dazzle 80 which is an input device that has RCA jacks and Svideo jack. It hooks to the computer via USB. Basically i think you use a vcr or camcorder and play the home movie and the software records it. Then it converts it to digital to burn to DVD or vcd. Looks cool especially if you have old vhs movie and other important stuff.

[ScottAJJD]

Thanks for the advice. A few follow-up questions:

1.) Based on my limited understanding (please correct me if I'm wrong), a firewire card captures *exactly* what is on the DV tape and creates an AVI file. There is no difference between the data stored on the DV tape and the captured AVI file. However, since the AVI is uncompressed, it is a very large file. The AVI must be converted to MPEG2 to be written to DVD+R (which includes compressing the file). Considering all of this, would it make sense to save/archive the original AVI file (as a data file) on a DVD+R disc?

2.) Since stand alone DVD recorders automatically compress files to burn them onto DVD, would it be reasonable to assume that capturing footage (via analog pass through & firewire card) and keeping the resulting AVI file could actually produce a higher quality video than a stand alone DVD recorder?

Thanks!
-Scott

[Petco]

You have all the equipment already. Use your VHS->Camcorder->firewire->raw AVI - I've experimented with captured cards etc, and my Sony DV gave me the best results.

At first, I used to take my raw AVI and convert to MPEG2 but now I just drag my AVI directly Ulead DVD Workshop and let it convert to DVD format.

You need at least 20 gigs of harddrive space to play. I took my European vacation (8mm) and created DVD menus (with music) etc in Ulead DVD Workshop and burned. Turned out great!!

[yg1968]

DV is compressed on a 5:1 ratio. Mpeg-2's compression ratio varies but is often close to 20:1. Theoritically, DV is better since it is less compressed. However, as you mention, DV takes about 12 gig per hour which means that you can only fit 20 minutes of a DV on a DVD+R or DVD+RW. You can edit DV and export it back to a miniDV tape but it makes little sense archiving DV on a DVD+R. You are better off archiving DV on miniDV tapes.

A stand alone DV recorder can only burn in mpeg. It essentially converts the DV to mpeg-2 on the fly. The computer DVD writer is slower than the standalone recorder but offers much more flexibility for menus, encoding settings, etc.

[donpedro]

ScottAJJD, This is how I understand process.

When you record with DV camcorder, DV compressed picture is stored on tape. During capture through firewire port you just copy of it (compressed picture) without loss.

So when you use DV cam as passthrough, you are compressing on the fly by cammcorders hardware to DV AVI format. This format in my case takes about 200MB/min (as per documentaion in Pinnacle Studio 8 ).

[G-man]

yg1968 is right on with his recommendation. You are not copying 70mm digital masters here, it' s VHS & 8mm!

I don't think you need to worry about saving original AVI files; MPEG-2 files at 352x480 encoded correctly will use up about 1.4Gb per hour. Another option would be to save your recordings on your camcorder's DV tapes.

I have a Canon ZR-40 and I get excellent quality doing the above, at least as good as the original VHS tape (I think noticably better). I actually capture Directivo Satellite via the pass thru, and when it's encoded and burned to DVD you would be hard pressed to tell the difference between the original and the encoded DVD.

[byron neil]

You have all the equipment already. Use your VHS->Camcorder->firewire->raw AVI - I've experimented with captured cards etc, and my Sony DV gave me the best results.

At first, I used to take my raw AVI and convert to MPEG2 but now I just drag my AVI directly Ulead DVD Workshop and let it convert to DVD format.

You need at least 20 gigs of harddrive space to play. I took my European vacation (8mm) and created DVD menus (with music) etc in Ulead DVD Workshop and burned. Turned out great!!

Please allow me to ask some questions, as it appears to me that you have described exactly what I want to do.
I have the Sony cam with the pass thru capability, and I want to arcive these old tapes as AVI so my kids can author them at a later date. I am putting them on CD. Is it possible to somehow divide a 4GB AVI file to be burned to a succession of CDs? I have Nero and am using a Samsung combo (dvd rom/cd r/rw)burner.
I can use Pinnacle to make VCDs, but I want to archive these tapes for future editing by my kids.
Byron

[G-man]

I would recommend not trying to keep them as AVI, but rather just copying them to DV tape if you don't want to process them now. It would be a lot less work than trying to split an AVI file into many pieces.

So ..... copy to DV tape, then process a set from there ..... create VCDs for your short term viewing pleasure, and save the DV tapes for your kids down the road .... they will last at least ten years.

[byron neil]

Thanks for the information. This string has given me some very good information. Since I posted I have found out how difficult it would be to archive AVI to CD. I will make a movie for VideoCD and archive on DV tape for future editing. I know that my kids are going to want to edit these "home movies" for a less boring presentation in the future when they retire and have lots of time on their hands. Their VHS tapes are almost 20 years old now, and are losing quality fast. I'll buy them an additional 10-15 years. By that time, they will be ready to do something with them.
Thanks again for the good advice.
Byron

[donpedro]

I agree with G-Man. Copying to CD large AVI files will be too dificult and you will need too many of them. Recording edited AVI back to tape sounds like the best idea if you don't plan to ivest into DVD area. Actualy I see you did that already. So maybe if you can just cut AVI to proper size (I don't remember how many minutes of AVI you can fit on 1 DVD) you can archive them on DVD as a raw AVI file too.

[byron neil]

Thanks, donpedro, but my CD burner is a combo DVD ROM/CDRW recorder, so I can't burn DVD yet. Maybe another year or two.
Byron

[yg1968]

You can only fit 20 minutes of DV on a DVD+R or DVD+RW. So you are better off archiving to miniDV tapes.

A few years down the road, I guess that we will be able to fit 2 hours of DV on a Blue-ray disk. Something to look forward to...

[SaSi]

I would focus on two hints of the original question that should drive the answer.

1. Lots of content
2. VHS, 8mm and DV (different formats).

ScotAJJD, I assume you want to create DVDs that can be viewed on a standalone DVD player. (This rules out the discussion about recording DV content on the DVDRs; it won't be viewable on a DVD player).

The easy part of the answer is that DV content is actually copied on the PC via a firewire port. It's more file transfer than capturing and you don't loose quality.

If I was on a not so tight budget, I would get a versatile standalone DVD recorder that can record in varying bitrates for variable quality. One that can record on DVD-RW (or DVD+RW).

Nothing beats the simplicity of pressing "PLAY" on one machine and "REC" on another. I would make transfers to the DVD recorder - whole tapes at a time. A DVD-R can record 120 minutes at very good quality, certainly better than VHS and almost as good - or better - than 8mm.

I would then copy the content of the DVDRW made on the standalone onto the PC for editing and author DVDs per content.

The pros of this approach is simplicity and I don't think quality will be sacrificed.

The cons is cost, unless you can find a good quality DVD recorder at a budget price.

The low cost approach, that doesn't sacrifice any quality but increases complexity, is buying a good capture card (I would not really recommend one of those who claim DVD quality recording with s/w mpeg encoder s/w but a plain S-Video In equipped card). I think the ASUS 9180 is a bargain these days.

This approach is fine if your PC has a 1.6GHz CPU or better. Lower than that, it becomes a bit problematic with misery like lost frames, lost sync between video and audio and the like.

I would (actually this is what I am doing), record whole tapes onto the PC (I am using VirtualDUB with huffyuv codec that is lossless), edit them and cut garbage, perhaps author movies with Premier or another package, and create movies.

These can be authored into DVD with any suitable s/w (such as Pinnacle).

All the above are fine and fancy and quite time consuming. Add frustration for a couple of days, until you discover how it is all done.

And, add $200 (almost) for a VGA with capture port plus another $250~300 for a really big disk.

Comparing the two methods (I have already selected the second), the first is fine if you can get a standalone DVD recorder for less than $500. I would raise this budget as time and frustration also carry a price, so I would go upto $700. And having a DVD recorder is fun anyhow, so why not $800? :P