Hi all, can you please help me, I really dont know what would be the best way to capture some VHS footage, as far as I can tell I've got 2 options. 1. Buy one of these http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/USB-2-0-VHS-t...3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=66:2|65:7|39:1|240:1318 And a scart converter. 2. Buy a PVR 150 TV card & get some extra cables. Quality is important to me, I'm looking to burn the captured video onto DVD so the DVD quality is equal to the original VHS tape quality ( which is quite good incidently ) Whats the best option from a quality point of view ? I'm using windows XP ( sp2 ) My hardware specs are : AMD socket 939 - 4000+ clocked at 2.6 ghz 2 GB RAM X850 XT hitachi 7200 RPM 250 GB hard drive.
I found that the best quality was to connect the tape player to a standalone DVD Recorder. I have also used a TV capture card in the PC, but it's much less convenient. Something to bear in mind is that if these are commercial tapes, some of them may have Macrovision protection. In that case, if saving to a recorder, a 'video Stabilizer' or similar is used to pass the video from the tape player to the recorder. Combo units generally don't don't allow this (they don't have the external jacks). The same scenario might occur with a capture card - you have to research to find out if they honour the Macrovision signal - mine doesn't.
No it's home video footage so no protection on it. So do you think the TV card will be better quality than the USB method ?
I expect a dedicated card to process the video better than a USB device Start a thread at the Videohelp site for more information. http://forum.videohelp.com/
The vhs tape when it infests your home can be a menace.. eating up all your spare room and top of wardrobe areas rapidly... For simple and fast elimination of the problem..
1. Use a good SVHS VCR for the best signal 2. Device to remove what recorder/capture card "thinks" is anticopy, even if homemade tapes, whether it's really there or not DOES NOT matter. Either a full TBC or a "copy filter" device of some kind. 3. Optionally, devices to filter tape signal more, such as proc amp or detailer/sharpener 4. Capture device, be it DVD recorder or capture card. The best DVD recorders from JVC and Toshiba (old models, not found in stores), plus a few others (LiteOn, Ilo, Zenith) could also IMPROVE the signal quality. Yes, the DVD can look better than the source tapes! Indeed, both http://www.digitalFAQ.com and http://www.VideoHelp.com have more information on this topic, in detail.
As a matter of fact, I've been doing this the past couple months, on and off, myself. I have about 50 VHS tapes, mostly PBS programs like Nova, Nature, and historical documentaries, that I worried would be unviewable in the future. Time to put them on DVD. I don't think this is necessarily the best solution, but here's what I'm using: Hardware: * WinXP machine, old and slow, but no problem. * VCR, of course. * ADS Instant DVD 2.0. This is a small box that takes the VCR's analog Red, Yellow, and White outputs, and sends the digitized signal to the computer via USB. Software * Ulead VideoStudio. I'm using version 7, pretty old, but it works fine. This captures the VCR's output and saves it to the computer as an mpg file. * Ulead MovieMaker. Again, I'm using an old version (MM2), but again, works fine. MM is what burns the completed mpg file to the DVD blank, and lets you create a simple on-screen video menu as well. (In other words, you can title your intro screen, and if you have two or more programs on the DVD, you can arrow between them and select the one to play.) * Avidemux, to delete/trim the tape, as for example commercials. (And the reason I'm at this forum.) This reply to your question is my contribution to justify the help I'll ask for in another post. The results I'm getting with Avidemux are blurry. Avidemux has a great interface for editing the video, but it has so many options and settings, I'm sure one of them is wrong, as my completed video looks much worse than if I go straight from the tape to the disk. Hope this helped.
