Encoding VHS to DVD with quality

Hello all,

first i would like to apologize for being an absolute noobie. DVDs are hard

Secondly I have a question:

I am trying to take several VHS tapes and convert them to DVDs. The tapes contain several half hour episodes. I first tried to play the entire tape and encode it. This created a giant file (50+ gigs) that I had to chop in half before it was feasible to work with. I have since got that file cut and pasted into the proper 30 min blocks. (One) of the problems I'm having is that the sound is absolutely terrible. There is a underlying staticy hiss over the entire thing and when the voices go high I have massive distortion. Has anybody tried this type of thing before with better luck?

Now thats the "overview" of my problem, here are the nuts and bolts.
Hardware:
Video card: Radeon 8500dv
Processor: Duron 750
Ram: 386
Storage: 120gig and a 20gig
I am encoding at: Video - MPEG-2 720X480 NTSC (525) 8.00 mbit/sec; Audio 48.000 16 bit stero
I have been reading the guides and faqs here and elsewhere for awhile now but have yet to find someone attempting a project where quality was a greater concern than storage space. I understand that I can never have greater picture and sound than I start with but right now I'm experiencing a significant downgrade in both. These tapes contain stuff that I would like to keep at the best quality possible. Any tips would be useful.

Thanks for your help,
Jim

 

I banged my head over this for two months. I have a slightly faster computer (P4 1.6; 512 RAM) but a lesser video card (ATI Rage Fury Pro.)

As with you; my primary goal was no loss of quality. I tried all kinds of software, even tried a higher end video card, and higher sound card. Being a videophile I still wasn't satisfied.

I went out and bought a Panasonic DMR-E50 stand alone DVD recorder. OK, actually I rented a DMR-E30 first to try it out. Best $800 CDN I ever spent. ($575 US)

I did up a few tapes for a buddy of mine, and he calls me up saying "hey, these DVD's are better than the VHS version." I nodded and said OK, while thinking "bullsh!t." I looked at one and actually noticed it was better. Looking through the user's guide I noticed any analogue signal was passed through a 3 line digital comb filter. So it actually was slightly better quality. Not much, but slightly.

Hope this helps you a bit.