Hi, I want to transfer about 600 video tapes (programmes I've taped from TV over the past twenty years) to DVD. I initially bought a very cheap (£25) USB box called V-Stream Xpert USB2.0 DVD Maker. This produced clean video on the PC, but it looked 'pixellated' i.e. you could clearly see it was a sample of a much better, smoother looking picture. When I watched the source tape on my TV, next to my PC monitor, the picture was much better on the TV. The PC version was about half the resolution, so I presume this is because the USB box wasn't sampling the picture very well. I then bought a H&B TX100 box, and this produced similar results: while the picture looks fine in a small window, when you blow it up to full screen size, you can immediately see that half of the resolution of the original has been lost. I've tried adjusting every setting I can find, finalising the video (or whatever it's called) to DIVX, HQ DVD, etc.etc. and none of them look very good. I don't want to spend months copying over tapes to find I could have got better quality copies. I've looked all over the 'net for reviews of the quality of the various capture boxes and PCI cards, and I've found nothing. There are some reviews of various devices, but most of them hardly mention what sort of quality video they produce! I don't mind spending £200 if necessary, as this is a big job that will take me ages and last me a lifetime. I've bought a cheap standalone DVD Recorder, a Cyberhome 1600, and this gives better quality on its highest setting (but only one hour per DVD). On its two hour setting it's not as good, so I don't want to use it. I've heard the Panasonic range give the best visual quality recordings at SP (2 hours per DVD), so I'm thinking of trying that route instead, and then just putting the DVDs into my PC to edit them down afterwards. Is there a PCI capture card that will give me the same or better quality as the Panasonic range of DVD Recorders can? I'm also happy to save the video to DIVX format as it seems to be extremely high quality for such a small file. (I got a copy of 'Team America' from a P2P network that was only 700Mb and the quality was literally as good as a full size 4.7Gb DVD.) Is there a way to stream the video into the PC in extremely high quality, making a big file, and then let the PC take its time to convert it to DIVX? That sounds like the ideal option for me.
Just to be a bit more helpful: There are many ways you can get much better quality. There are dozens (literally) of capture guides. Read through a lot of the stuff on this forum and you'll learn a huge amount. Start with that thread though.
Well you have to realize that the VHS resolution is Less than Half the Resolution of DVD and when Captureing useing an analogue Capture device you are going to loose some Quality from the Original Video, How much Quality you Loose depends on the Capture device and the Format captured too..... Some of the Best Capture devices For Captureing from VHS are the "Canopus ADVC-100/110/300" Line of Analogue Digital Video Converters... These Devices Capture the Video useing Hardware DV Compression and have a Built in TBC (Time Based Corrector) and an audio Lock Feature so you get a Smooth Running Picture without any Chance of there being a Sync problem.... Most Consumer Level Capture devices on the Market use either a 8 Bit, 9 Bit,10 Bit or 12 Bit Video decoder but the Canopus ADVC Devices use a 24 Bit Video decoder which Produces much better quality than other Video decoders... After the Files have been Captured to DV AVI format you can add Filters to Help clean up the Noise and any Imperfections in the Video and then you can use a High Quality Mpeg encoder to Compress the Video files to Mpeg-2 for DVD authoring and then author them to DVD with Menu"s and Chapters.... These Devices are External Firewire devices and will Run you about $250 US for the ADVC-100/110 Models... Many Poeple who use them Swear by them and i haven"t Heard of anyone who owns one of these devices say that the Quality wasn"t acceptable... There is one Card Made by Canopus that does the same thing But is a Internal PCI Card and it is Called the "Canopus ACEDVio" which has most of the Same Features as the external Models and Produces the same Quality and is about the same Price... It might be something worth Checking out.....Cheers
to tarquinsa-go hp.com and check out the specs for a dc5000 movie writer.this writer is external and comes with everything you need except a clarifier to kill copyright protection which you can get at facetvideo.com.the dc5000 movie writer is an external dvd writer with a built in capture card and is connected to the computer by a 2.0 usb connection.this machine comes with all the cables and program needed to ternsfer vhs to dvd.cost 199.00 complete,you supply the vcr and clarifier.keep in mind that you may not always get the best quality dvd mainly because over time vhs tapes deterioate,if you have a good vhs tape you get a good dvd.to date i have converted all the vhs movies i own to include the ones that had deterioated in time,they are still worth having in my dvd collection.
Minion's suggestion is good but if you are converting 600 tapes I would recommend getting a good JVC 9000 series VCR and a (maybe JVC again) DVD recorder. With the Canopus it's DV AVI which means it needs to be encoded to MPEG2 to be used for a DVD. Encoding 2 hours could take a day depending on the computer you have (also the DV AVI files are huge). Now if you want to make DivXs then the Canopus would be a good choice but I prefer the ATI AIW capture cards.
