Hi y'all - I'm starting from a position of zero knowledge here so be gentle !! First hurdle I've got is how to (physically) connect my VCR to my PC. I'm aware that my PC needs a capture device/card.My "problem" is My VCR has 2 scart outs and Audio L+R - What cabling do I need ?? I'm pretty sure I can navigate the rest from the excellent posts in this forum!! Here's hoping.....
If these are audio L+R and video - then yes I've got a scart adaptor with female plugs to take these cables. So I can now go ahead and get my capture card then ?? Thanks !!
Theoretically yes.... there a lot of little icky details you should look over first though: 1. Either your soundcard/capture card can accept that 3-plug format or you the the appropriate convertors and such to allow you to plug it into a 3.5 mm stereo jack (now if you want to do multiple source inputs that a totally different ballgame) 2. How fast is your computer and/or how big is your harddrive. I ask because (a) if you have a slow computer, you wont be able to do realtime capture-encoding and thus your filesizes will be on the order of um... huge. (b) If you have a big harddrive then you can do realtime encoding however that will tax your proc and subsystem.
OK - No1. Now I know what to look for regarding means of inputting signals - I'm really gonna need to see the actual card (i.e not just a squishy lil' picture on a box!!) No.2 PC is a 1Ghz Pentium3;HD is 20 GB with approx 10 GB of free space currently. So,does this make my PC slow for the hoped for task ?? Thanks for your invaluable help Praetorian !!!
1GHz P3 .... probably too slow for sustained realtime high quality divx/xvid encoding. Its worth a shot of course but I would venture to guess slightly overwhelming for that proc. Then again, no encoding = massive filesize = harddrive becomes the bottleneck because it is slow to transfer so much damn data. Give it a shot in anycase, usually trial and error reveals the best way anywho.
OK - at the risk of being a total pest here (!!!) Could I have a Plain English version of your last reply please. (What does "proc" mean ?) My intention is to convert old VHS's to VCD, simple as that - is my PC up to that or will it struggle too much for processing power ?? I'm hesitant to go the "trial and error route" I don't want to be left with a useless piece of Software/capture card - Whaddya think. Thanks for your patience and help !!
MrG? If/when you find out anything about how to put vhs movies onto vcd, will you let me know? I have almost 100 movies on vhs that I need to get onto either vcd or dvd. I personally wanted to put them onto dvd, but no one can explain it in a way I can understand them. So I will settle for vcd I guess. Thanks alot
No Problem ! Be warned though...If I can crack this nut The how's and why's will be in tech-lite ! Most of my VHS's are music and some historical docu's that are beginning to look their age So I'm (pretty) determined to figure a way!
Thanks. I don't care how lite the explanation is. A little bit of something is better than a whole lot of nothing.
Are you having problems with getting th movies onto computer? or dealing with them after they have been captured?
I am in the same boat as MrG--wanting to copy vhs tapes to my computer so I can burn them to DVD. The question that I am trying to answer is what brand/model of capture card works well. Can anyone suggest a card that will record to mpeg-2 (to minimize process steps), has a built-in tuner (for future experimentation) and has an acceptable resolution (I'm not sure what is "acceptable" for TV playback but I note many people complain about inadequate resolutions. I would prefer having input options (coax and component) Are there any other issues worth considering concerning the actual capture card? Thanks
From what I hear, some of the Canopus/pinncale ones offer good performance, of course i cant verify that... I just use the video In built into my vid card and on the side i have a PCI TVtuner._X_X_X_X_X_[small]ASUS A7V8X-X, AMD2500+ Samsung 1024MB, PC2700 360GB [3x120GB, 7200, 8MB] MSI Starforce, GeForce4 Ti4400 128MB Rules and Policies: http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/2487 AFTERDAWN IRC: irc.emule-project.net, #ad_buddies COME SAY HI![/small]
Hi guys, a couple of months ago I purchased the ADS usb instant dvd box. Before I got to hook it up, My daughter and son-in-law asked to borrow it to try something. They build and maintain web sites for businesses where they live. I guess it worked well because they don't want to give it back. It has usb to the computer and several ways to input the signal(s-video, RCA phono both audio l&r and video) Not sure about quality since I haven't seen anything done with it yet. Going to their house this week end. I'll try to remember to look into it. Jerry
Awesome, look forward to your review... seems like a kewl product with only one initial concern: USB? USB is nice yes but for high bitrate transfer perhaps not the best thing for the job
