I never had much time for movies but do now and just invested in a decent Home Theatre sytem. As far as equipment goes, all I have right now is TV with built-in DVD and VHS and I've got DVD players on my pc's but no recorder of any sort. I would like to be able to do 2 things mainly 1] Put all of my old VHS tapes on DVD 2] Copy all of my DVD's unto other DVD's so that I would have say 3 movies on just one DVD thereby saving space and easing up on clutter. What equipment would I need for this to make the above possible please? Thanks.
mikehende, If those are home vhs tapes then you need a capture card ( I use an ATI Card 9700-Pro). You can either capture from the camera or a Vhs Player. Run the audio out and video out from camera to audio and video in of the Capture Card. If these are commerical VHS Tapes you will need a mod box to go between the VHS player and the computer captre card. The box removes macrovision. Much quicker to find the movie at a retail store and rent it. If you put 3 movies on 1 DVD the compression would be too much. Even 2 movies is a lot even if you do movie only. If you want to try then you can use Shrink or Nero Ultra ( recode). Most people look for quality in there copies
I have a capture card on my pc that I use to record or watch anything from the TV screen or my Camcorder om my pc but what I wish to copy are the commercial VHS and DVD's so my first step I thought would have been to get a DVD "Burner"? Please advise, thanks.
mikehende, You can get a Lite-on for under $60.00 and Pioneer is good and the Plextor are the best. It really depends on how much you want to spend. I use the Pioneer A08 and have had no problems
I use Nero Recode2 for compressing movies.... I don't own any VHS, so someone else could recommend something else based on their experience... DEFINITELY use quality media: Taiyo Yuden or Verbatim are two of the best. I use, and love my Pioneer 109. For decryption, I use DVD43 (decrypts on the fly while Recode rips to HD, then burn with BurningROM); there is DVD Decrypter (which decrypts, rips, and burns); DVD Shrink (which decrypts and compresses). The most affordable combo is Shrink and Decrypter (free). Since you are gonna be transferring from VHS, Nero OEM Suite 3 includes Recode2 and BurningROM that you can get for $8 shipped... DVD43 is free as well. Oh yeah, get at least one DVD RW to practice with...
Ok, so I get a burner, what's next? 1] Do I need a special software? 2] What about the issue of "copyrighted" movies? Even though I own them whether on VHS or DVD, how can I copy them?
I am strictly speaking DVD back-ups. Some one else with more experience will chime in soon, I'm sure.
mikehende, You will need DVDDecrypter or AnyDVD($39.00) to decrypt the movies . Suggest AnyDVD and DVDDecrypter is no longer being updated. You can then get Nero Ultra ( $ 39.00-99.00 ) depends on where you buy it or use DVDShrink which is free. As long as you are not selling the copies you should be OK making a copy for personal use. Here is the guide section and it will tell you what software and how to use it: http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/
After getting the DVD Burnner To get around the protection you will need 1 or can use both the following programs: DVD Decryptor or AnyDVD. DVD Decryptor is free and does most DVD out there. AnyDVD cost I think $30 after the trial version expires. Well worth the money in my opinion havent had a DVD yet that AnyDVD hasent done. Most people use one of them programs or both. There are other programs that can do the job but those are the 2 most popular. You will need a program to compress or edit the DVD. DVD Shrink is free and used by alot but isnt updated anymore. I personaly use Nero Recode2 which is part of NERO ULTRA EDITION. Another program i use is Nero Vision Express to capture and burn VHS tapes to DVDs. Again that comes with NERO ULTRA EDITION. There are also other programs out there as well but I have only used the programs above and have had good results from them. Also good media and slow burrning gives better results as well. After you get the programs you want do a search on userguides for the programs. There are alot of guides out there to help.
What about one of the stand alone units that has a VHS Deck and a DVD Recorder in it? Do those still keep the macrovision in so you can't record from VHS to DVD ... I know if you hook up 2 vcrs that the macrovision is there sometimes.. Is it the same when going VCR to DVD? Even in the new Combo units? I know the VCR/DVD Burner units say you can have up to 6hrs on a single DVD too I don't know about the quality... Any info on a stand alone would be greatly appreciated.. I've always been curious about it myself...
I don't think he'd have quite the editing capabilities with a standalone, and PLUS, he wants to back-up DVD's as well... @larrylje: Good call. I was trying to save him some money by recommending Nero OEM Suite 3 instead of the Ultra, but the Vision Express2 SE in suite 3 is not as fully functional as the Vision Express2 in Ultra.
Could always back up your DVD's to Xvid or DIVX and buy a stand alone Divx Player so you can play them on your TV...
I have Nero 6 OEM Suite, will this do? I understand your point here about "copying for sale", this is not my case I assure you. I have DVD's which I had bought on Ebay that comes with "double feature" and I like this, also back in the day, I used 2 VCR's to record 2 or 3 movies on 1 video just to avoid clutter and also to categorize my movies, eg, I would like to have my 3 fav Bruce Lee films on one VHS e.t.c. You guys have given me some great stuff here, many thanks to each of you, when I get a burner I will ask for help if neccessary but only after reading the guides you linked me to, thanks. I n the meantime, will still welcome any other inputs here.
@teflonmyk Thats why I sugested the Ultra Edition. I finaly ended up getting it after my experince with the OEM version about drove me nuts. I have put all my VHS tapes on DVD with the Ultra Edition with Nero Vision Express. It was time consuming which most time is spent on capturing the VHS onto your computer. But after that the rest is pretty quick. I like the results myself. After capturing the movie you can use Vision Express to create chapters and make a Menu for the DVD makes it easier to go to diffrent points of the movie. It takes some time to get used to the functions but after time you get used to it and can make VHS backups pretty quick with DVD Chapters and menus.
@mikehende I sent you a private message. also there is a way to add more then 1 movie on a DVD but the quility will go down due to compression. I did it once but the quility wasnt worth it. As of cluter I have a system I learned from somone else here and tried it and it works great. I have backed up all my DVDs and VHS tapes and packed them away in a box and stored. I then take the backup DVD disk and place them in CD paper Sleaves which you can get at walmart 50 for around $2 bucks. I also get mailing labels and print the name of the DVD on them and place it on the top left hand corner of the paper sleeve. Then I bought 4 plastic shoe boxes at walmart for $1 a piece and use bubble wrape in the bottem of them to keep the DVDs from slidding back and forth. I then list them in a DVD collectors program called Movie COllector which you can get at http://www.collectorz.com/movie Or just use a data base program to list them so you can filter how you want the movies to be listed. I filter the list to be in Alphabetical order and then place the DVD in the plastic shoe boxes in Alphabetical order. Easy to find the DVDs even without looking at your list. Iv spent less then $30 bucks on this sytem and it works great.
Aprreciate the tips, will definitely look into it. I am not a movie buff so quality is not much of an issue for me, I purchased a double-feature Bruce lee DVD on Ebay a while back and I don't see much difference if any between any of those 2 films and another DVD I have with just 1 Bruce Lee film on it so that is why I am thinking of placing 3 films on each DVD. I will experiment with this though before making a final decision on if to place 2 or more films on a DVD, first step is to get all of the equipment/software I will need and learn how to use it I think.
What "speed" should I look for in a DVD burner? I am thinking that if I should burn at say 4x then it does not make sense to buy a 48x speed? I should then simply look for a 4x burner, is this correct?
Look for whatever you can afford.. I 52x is a high end burner and I don't know if you can find a 16x anymore.. So a 48x would be fine.... remember that it will read faster if it's a 48 or 52x than if it's a 16x too
depends on what you're burning... for DVD's Games etc the Slower the better.. but if you don't already have a DVD Drive your DVD Burner will need to be fast to read the Cd's faster for you.. If you're burning Movies or Games 2x or 4x is recomended BURN SPEED.. Remember the speed of the drive is for Burning and reading...
