vcr vhs tape to dvd via camcorder

I have a Panasonic Mini dv camcorder, I want to convert a VHS tape to dvd with my PC via the camcorder. I have heard that this can be done using the firewire port. Would someone help me with the instructions or a link to instructions along with what software is needed.

Thanks

 

The first things that you have to do is find out if your camcorder has a firewire output connection, your computer has a firewire input connection, your camcorder has input connections to enable connecting the VCR to it, and your camcorder supports pass through. You can find these 4 things in the manuals for your camcorder and computer.

 

mine has all those things and the VCR program will play on the camera. when I try to capture it with either Nero or Pinnacle it freezes and captures nothing.

 

Use a Native DV Capture program Like "WinDV" or "DVIO" which are Made to capture from DV Camcorders....

Cheers

 

Doesn't the camcorder come with some sort of capturing program ?

 

Camcorders come with tapes for capture not software.

 

Hey, we should help the guy here. It's certainly possible to route the output of a VHS tape deck into a camcorder, out of it via Firewire/1394/iLInk into your PC's 1394 port for capture. The only issue arises from Macrovision ... in which case either make or buy a "video stabiliser" which will strip out the injected Macrovision signal elements (imposed on the VCR output, even if it is your own video ... ).

In all this, you do NOT need a tape in the "pass through" camcorder.

Best of luck.

 

I got this to work, I used my camcorder with ULead software. It turned okay but the video quality could be a little better. Just wondering if there is better software than Ulead. The picture seems to have a little pixeling in it.

 

What format are you Captureing to?? If you are Captureing to a Compressed Format Like Mpeg then don"t Try captureing to your Camcorders native DV AVI format..You can do it with Freeware apps Like "WinDV" or "DVIO"....

 

Minion, I think you are spot on about AVI capture (even if you need to buy another 200G drive ...). By "pixellation" do you mean rectangular artifacts in the video, or fringeing around objects, or just a generally high level of "noise" across the image ... a better description helps track down the source ...

 

I have just converted by first VHS tape to DVD successfully. A couple of comments:

1. My new Canon miniDVD did not come with any DVD software. The salesman found a CD in a drawer called Video Presenter, which Canon must have supplied in the past. I used Nerovision Express to capture to AVI but next time I will be using DVIO. I had to buy a firewire cable - USD$11 at a suburban computer shop. Actually the Canon kit was poor - not even a blank tape!

2. The quality of the converted tape was pretty ordinary, but then it was an ancient ex-rental and the film was not cleaned up before going on to VHS anyway. The audio would have to be described as lo-fi, but optical sound tracks are not of good fidelity of the first place.

3. The raw AVI seemed too dark to me so I so applied some TEMPGEnc filters to clean it up: noise removal, increased gamma and increased brightness. The final result is a slightly garish on the PC. It comes up fine when played on the TV, which tones it down a bit. A bitrate of 6,200 produced a file of just under 4.3Gb.

3. After producing a MPEG file with TEMPGEnc (4 hours) I used WINAVI Video Converter to produce DVD files for burning.

I stand to be corrected but I don't think you'll ever get a sharp picture out of VHS as it's only 250 lines to start with. This fairly low quality would look like 'noise' on the PC screen.

 

And bmorey, quite apart from the illuminance issues, the signal noise and the lack of detail, there are the chroma problems ("blooming reds" as they are often called) ... it goes on ...

The good news is you can capture to AVI, and cram about 6.5 hours of VHS onto a dual-layer DVD and people will still say what a great transfer ...

I gotta say VHS was always crap, and I reckon a lot of commercial DVD resolution is also not much better ... but hey, at least its preserved.

Cheers.

 

I got it to work with my sony Dig camera. It has to be set in the menue for digital video out. (it was in the manual). really nice capture in mpeg. The sound is in sync with the movie. But when I try to edit it and put it on a disc with Pinnacle the sound is out of Sync with the movie. whats up with that?

 

'Blooming reds' is right. Man, they glow! No detail in them and they eat up the surrounding area. I didn't know this was a standard problem with VHS - thanks for the insight.

 

You can easilly Fix the Chroma Inballance in the Video useing pretty Much any good Video editing program that has Filters for Fixing the Color Ballance....

This is a Common Problem when Captureing Analogue RGB video into Digital YUV Video that is why Most DV editing Programs Have Filters for Fixing just these Types of Color problems...

Cheers

 

I used the DVIO program to capture, it worked fine but near the end I found the sound was delayed or behind from what was being shown. Did I do something wrong here?

 

Interesting. I haved found delayed sound when playing the AVI files back in PowerDVD, but no delay in Media Player.

 

If your Useing your DV Camcorders Passthrough to capture then there will be a Chance of Sync problems Like with any Video Capture....

The Sync problem Might be caused from a Number of Things Like Dropped Frames or from captureing from a Very Old Tape or some of the Possible reasons.....

Make sure You are Captureing to a seperate defragmented Hard Drive as to try to avoid Dropped Frames.....


Cheers