I'd like ANY feedback...if anyone would care to share on draw-backs (or advantages) with the ArcSoft Showbiz2 software. I've been using it successfully but have little to compare it to. Let me get a couple things out front: a. I can't afford any $500 video softwares, so please don't start telling me about them....*heh* b. I have a Sony Vaio multimedia PC with about 200 GB of dedicated space for video and a lot of add RAM too. c. My main thing is analog to DVD with an eye toward editing (which, I suppose is why I chose ArcSoft in the first place). So, now you have a thumbnail sketch of where I'm sitting (broke with a lot of ambition! *hehe*) please share what you've learned, pro or con, about ShowBiz2. Looking forward to some interesting reports. Louie7
"Arcsoft ShowBiz" is a Very low end Editing Program or should I say a Consumer Oriented program which is lacking any Advanced editing Features.... If you want to check out a Fairly Good But low cost editing program that has Lots of Good Features them maybe take a Look at "MagiX Movie Edit Pro v10.0" which is one of the Better Low Cost editing Packages and it also Comes with a whole Bunch of extras Images and Menu"s and such to use in your Projects... You can check it out here: http://site.magix.net/index.php?us_movie_edit_pro&type=2 And it only sells for about $50....Cheers
arcsoft showbiz dvd-2is a good program for converting vhs to dvd,true it may not have many extra features but if you have a lot of vhs tapes that you would like to convert to dvd,this is a good program.
ok...one con...one pro I find ShowBiz to offer a great deal of editing capability. My complaint is that I cannot get much more that 60 to 90 minutes of highest quality color video (with audio, of course) onto a DVD-R. It is my understanding, from reading many posts here at this forum, that a 'better' encoder would allow me get longer videos onto a DVD-R without changing the bit-rate for lower image quality. If it's possible to capture, edit, and author with ArcSoft, and then encode with a third party encoder such as the TMPGEnc encoder that I keep reading about, I'd like to know how. Even if that's possible thru some sort of import/export proceedure, which program would end up burning it, after encoding? I'm pretty good at file management and I can keep more than one thought in my head at a time (applause, please) but this gets a bit complex, doesn't it. L7
to louis7- you indicate you can only get 60 to 90 min transfer,arcsoft showbiz dvd-2 will convert a single layer of 3.5 hours and a double layer 7.0 hrs,in other words you should be able to transfer any vhs movie as long as it is no longer than 3.5 hours long.check your software to see if you have the latest version.
Hi - thanks - yes, well...whereas it IS true that ShowBiz will put those long video's onto a DVD-R, it only will do that provided the bitrate is reduced, resulting in lower image quality. In Showbiz preferences, there's a menu called [DVD QUALITY]...this menu offers two adjustments. One allows you to toggle between either VARIABLE BITRATE which is recommend, or CONSTANT BITRATE which seems to be the 'default' setting. The other adjustment lets you select from six birates, 2 Mbits/sec, 3 Mbits/sec, 4 Mbits/sec, 5 Mbits/sec, 6 Mbits/sec, 7 Mbits/sec...and finally AUTOFIT. 5 Mbits/sec is the 'default' setting. The menu has notes suggesting that bitrate settings for DV should be between 5 and 7 Mbits/sec...and between 2 and 5 for VHS tape. It goes on to say that lower bit-rates will produce longer play times with lower quality. When the project is all prepared and one clicks BURN DISC, ShowBiz announces if your project volume exceeds the capacity of the target Disc and recommends that you access the menu described above and reduce the bit-rate (and thus, the image quality). So, this is really what I'm saying.....People are suggesting that longer programs CAN be burned to a DVD-R WITHOUT reducing the bit-rate by using a better encoder. It sounds logical in theory, but I'm not understanding how to bypass the ShowBiz encoder after all my capturing, editing and such. L7
As Minion notes, Showbiz is a rather low end program, usually bundled with a hardware video capture device, as it was with mine. I have found WinDVD Recorder to be a better capture program & WinDVD Creator a better editing/authoring program than Showbiz, cost you around $150 the pair. You can download free trials of both applications. Bear in mind that you are converting VHS format to DVD format. The result will never be as good as a high end commercial DVD, since the source quality (VHS) is nowhere as good to begin with. You might want to try experimenting by capturing a short 5 minute clip at different quality settings, then do an "eyeball" comparison of the results. At the quality setting where you can see a difference in real-time quality, you probably don't need to set the bit rate much higher for VHS capture. Anything more is probably just a waste of time & HD space. My experience with VHS capture/editing/transcoding is that you should be able to fit 100 minutes of movie on any Single Layer DVD disk, possibly quite a bit more.
It can be done (even with Macrovision) without buying anything else and with excellent quality, but it's kind of a pain in the ass. I'm assuming you got Arcsoft Showbiz bundled with an HP Moviewriter. If not, you'll have to find the HP-DVD program that came with Arcsoft Showbiz. Anyway, here's what you do: (NOTE: Steps 1-4 apply ONLY if you want to disable the copy-protect warning. If your VHS tapes aren't copy-protected, you don't have to monkey with the quickdvd.set file at all). 1. Locate the quickdvd.set file in c:\program files\arcsoft\showbiz2. 2. Open the file with wordpad. 3. Change the ProtectOn=1 to ProtectOn=0 4. Save the file with the same name and close it. Now, you can't start Arcsoft Showbiz and expect to capture the video because it'll still show it copy-protected, but you CAN start the Hewlett Packard HP-DVD program and use the Video Transfer wizard. It will capture copy-protected VHS tapes just fine. If you want a very high quality transfer, that can also be done, but it involves more steps. Here's how I do it. After all the banjo work above, I start the HP-DVD video transfer wizard but I tell it the length is only HALF of what it actually is (in other words, for a 2 hour movie, I tell it the tape is only 1 hour). After the hour's worth of video is captured, I let the wizard tell me "You may now turn off your video recorder" and I do. Then I click "STOP" on the program screen cancelling the creation of a DVD. When it says, "Do you want to keep the video on your hard drive", answer "OK", give it a minute, and then exit the program. Back up your VCR just a bit and go through the process again capturing the second half of the movie. Follow the same procedure. What you've got now is your VHS tape split into TWO high-quality mpg files. Once you've got that done, you have several choices. 1. You can use Arcsoft Showbiz to enhance the contrast, brightness, hue, and saturation (if desired),combine them into one file, and then burn them to a DVD OR, for the best quality, 2. Use Arcsoft Showbiz to enhance the contrast, brightness, hue, and saturation of each mpg file and burn it AS A DVD onto your hard drive giving each of them a distinct folder name (e.g., SHREK1 AND SHREK2). You'll end up with half the movie in each folder. 3. Using a freeware program (I use DVD shrink in re-author mode), combine the two DVDs into one. True, you won't have a menu or any extras, but you didn't have those on the VHS tape either. And come on, how hard is it to push the fast forward button?
