I just got a new HP 300e DVD drive for the holidays and would like to convert my 8mm tapes to DVD before they fade away. I have the following configuration. PIII 800 MHz, 256K ram, Asus via chipset motherboard w/2x AGP, Windoze 98SE, an adaptec usb2.0/firewire pci card, and two free 5+ GB partitions on my harddrive 7200rpm maxtor (ATA 66, I believe). Because of my limited cpu speed I'm no longer looking at the cheap Dazzle stuff. The Pyro AV Link looks promising and the ADVC-100 or ADVC-50 look excellent. I like the price on ADVC-50 and probably won't be interesting in outputing to a VCR. I'm also not looking to do any fancy editing, just add chapters. I know Windoze 98 has the 4GB file limit so I was hoping I could use a lower resolution than the MPEG-2 maximum since I have 8mm tapes with 240x270 line resolution and fit a decent length recording onto the DVD. I am very new to this and learning a lot as I read. Any advice on what equipment/software to look at would be appreciated.
After some more research I've narrowed my choices down to the following: ADS Tech DVD Express (~$100) has a heating problem but locks audio and is fairly inexpensive Data video DAC 100 (~$170) seems to be the front runner right now Canopus ADVC 100 (~$300) a little too pricey Canopus ADVC 50 (~$180) seems the DAC-100 is a step above for the same price Leadtek Winfast TV2000XP (~$50) cheap but will it work with my configuration? Wish I could find one of these at a nice year end close out price! Any feedback is appreciated. Thanks Steve
Well I'll just keep posting replies to myself. Heck I like talking to myself ;-) Just wondering if the software that shipped with my HP drive and adaptec firewire card will work to encode and author a DVD on my system. I was given the following: Veritas RecordNow Arcsoft ShowBiz DVD Sonic MyDVD No sure yet what versions I got.
