needs some suggestions on capturing.

[drew22to375]

Hello I am new to caputing video. And would like some suggestions. What I want to do is caputing some of my home movies from my VCR and convert into DVD. My video card has a built in capture card. Gainward geforce 4. I have messed around with virtual dub using the guides on this site but my card doesn't seem to support some of the data formats and compression and the capture video really sucks. I have also tried neodvd with the same result. So what do I need to get the best quality I can? What capture card, program etc. should I be using to get the best possible results. Also my captured video seems to only be in Black and white with no color. thankx

[ASB]

It depends on how much you want to spend and what other interests you have. I think the best way is via DV. To do this you will need a firewire card (cheap) and an analog to DV converter. A few solutions here, many people like the Canopus ADVCxx converter, another way if you are into camcorders is to use a camcorder with analog to DV pass though, I chose to buy a Sony GV-D800E as I have about 80 8mm and Hi8 tapes I want to convert. The Sony will play these tapes and output to DV directly.

Of course there are analog card solutions, I will let others recommend for them.

[fortension]

geforce cards aren't known for their vivo quality. My ATI generates a perfectly good capture, unless you want to go for a dedicated card.

Doom9.org just posted a guide for analog capture with virtualdub - best place to start. And if you can't get good quality out of that, you're in trouble.

Learning to capture isn't easy, so be prepared to spend a little time

[Will Hay]

I'll second fortension's suggestion.
I bought a brand new ATI Radeon 64mb DDR ViVo (video in - video out) from ebay for £30.00 and the results are simply stunning.
I capture using Virtualdub at 720 x 576 using the PicVideo MJPEG codec at quality 19/20 (I can't tell the difference at 20/20 and the file size is nearly three times the size of 19/20) and then encode with TMPGEnc encoder, generally at 7000VBR.
Whilst the canopus is a good idea it's a little expensive and you'd still need to buy TMPGEnc Plus (the free download only has a 30 trial but trust me, it's well worth the asking price - if only a little slow).
Buying another camcorder with analogue passthrough is a good idea if you are going to buy another camcorder (like I will be this weekend Click here and help me choose one!) but if you're not is way, way of an overkill.
Remember, you're not going to get dvd quality from vhs tapes - what you put in you get out, and depending on the quality of the tapes/recording etc. expect some frame loss during capture.
(assuming you go the easy route and get a capture card).
Hope that helps.
Will

[Will Hay]

You might also want to consider a second hard drive for dedicated capture, formated before each capture.
I did this (2 x 80gb Maxtor D740X 7200rpm) and my captures improved dramatically.
Will