copying VHS to DVD

The Smart Lead product is available at www.ktvision.com and simply plugs into your VCR and your DVD recorder. The lead appears to be similar to a standard scart cable, although the cable end with the green light embedded should be attached to the recording source. Play the tape through the VCR and set-up the DVD recorder to record from the input your lead is connected in to. The lead appears to block the macrovision signal which your DVD recorder would normally detect. The Smart Lead Pro costs £49.99 plus postage of £3 and seems to work every time. I haven't tried it yet, but I would assume that the source could be a DVD player rather than a VCR player.

 

In order to preserve the best picture quality for later use I do transfer using the highest bitrate option available resulting in about 90 min for a 4.7 GB DVD-5. I can use DVD Shrink to burn DVD longer than 90 min into a DVD-5 for broadcast. I do not want to sacrifice the quality to further compress the .mpg files longer than 4.7 GB, and do't know how. Instead I prefer split each of them into two .mpg files in smaller size and save smaller size files into DVD as data. How can I do it? Please advise. Thanks.