VHS Tapes to DVD

Hey Minion, I got a dazzle dvd 200 card, wondering what is the best way to capture a VHS tape, and convert to VCD. Right now I've read around a bit and AVI_IO seems like the best program, using the HUFFY codec... I can use tmpeg or whatever after to make it into a vcd compliant file. Sound good? Any suggestions..

 

gcchaser: I Think I meant to format the Drive to NTFS Not Partition it,
jdhatt: I don"t know Much about your Card But you seem to have a Method that works, but if you can you should Maybe Useing SVCD Format if your DVD player supports or even better a DVD burner because Captured files converted to VCD will usually look Pretty Bad because VCD is a Low Quality Format....Cheers

 

Minion
How do I format the harddrive to NTFS? I know it was formatted during install so the OS would recognize it.

 

Well If might allready be formatted to NTFS(Only XP, NT or 2000 supports NTFS) Just Right click your Hard drives Icon and go to "Properties" and next to "File System" is should either say "Fat 32" or "NTFS"...If it Says NTFS then your Allright But if It says "Fat 32" then you will be limited to 4gb files...If your Drive is Fat 32 then you should First Back up all data from that Drive because Formating eraces all data from that drive...So what you do is First Open a Dos Command Prompt (If you don"t know how to do this then just go to "Start" to "Run" and Type in "cmd" and click "OK")..Now that you have the Dos Command Prompt window open type in:
convert D:/fs:ntfs .then Click Enter
This is if the Drive you want to convert to NTFS is your "D" Drive, if it is your "C" Drive you want to convert to NTFS then you would write, convert C:/fs:ntfs .and Press Enter..After pressing enter it will ask for the Volume Label for the Drive which Just means what do you want to call the Drive, You can Just put in something like "Main Drive" or call it "Video Drive" or whatever you want for the Volume Label....When the Format is Complete it will say "Conversion Complete" and you just need to Close the Dos window and that is it...You should Only use this Format method if you are Formating a Drive that your OS is not installed on, Like your Spare Drive....If your Main Drive needs to be Formated to NTFS then you should do it when installing Windows cut it gives you the Option to Format your main Drive when installing Windows...Remember only XP ,NT and 2000 and server versions support NTFS File Formats.....Cheers

 

At this time I'm running W98-se so I'm formatted in fat32. Can I still capture, edit and burn? 4gb is how much actual time on a VCD?

 

Hi, If you are Captureing Video to a High Quality AVI format Like HuffYUV then that is only about 10-15 minutes of Video...If you Capture directly to Mpeg1 VCD with a Mpeg Capture Program then you will have plenty of Space But you will also have Terrorable Quality...You Should Upgrade to XP because your OS is Basicly 6 Years old and Less and Less Software is going to be 98 Compatible...And because of the File Size Limitations you are Going to have a Really tough time of it....well good Luck

 

I'm upgrading to XP asap. My next question is capture devices. I've looked at Hauppauge TV FM, WinTV 2000 xp deluxe, and canopus DV 50 with firewire card. Realizing that my immediate goal is to capture my hi8 and vhs video to AVI files to edit prior to converting to MPEG1 or MPEG2 for authoring and burning, which capture device offers the best options and results in your opinion? Which would you choose?

 

Hey Minion I think one of your replys said that cutting out commercials was not really editing. Well I was wondering what kind of editing you are talking about? And why is AVI better for editing. Just what all can you do with this software?

 

Any altering of the Length or any Cutting or Joining IS Editing..So cutting comericals out of a File IS Editing if you believe it or Not...The Proper Way to edit(Cut/Join) Mpeg files is to use a Proper Mpeg editor because Proper Mpeg editors edit the Mpeg files Losslessly..These Kind of Editors will Usually Only Cut and Paste and Join Mpeg files without actually Changeing the Video Properties, Meaning you Can not Do Color Correction or Change the Resolution or Frame Rate or add Effects to the Mpeg files, but there is also Absolutely no Quality Loss either.These Kind of editors Will Only work with Mpeg files so you can Not Mix AVI file to the Mpeg files useing these Types of Editors...There are also AVI editors that work on the Same Principal ,They will Cut and Join and Merge and do basicly the same things as the Mpeg editor but also have the same Limitations..One of these Editors is "Virtual Dub" when used in "Direct Stream copy" Mode..These Types of editors are sometimes called Non-Destructive editors ...The other Types of Editors are editors were you will allmost allways Loose some Quality when working with Compressed AVI formats with a couple of exceptions ,One is the DV Format..You can edit and Render DV Files many Times without Looseing Quality, But there is a Limit of Course, The Other Exception is if you are useing Uncompressed AVI or a Lossless Codec Like HuffyUV then with these you can render over and over without any Quality Loss unless you are converting colorspaces but that is another Story....So AVI is Better for editing because you Can edit(Cut/Join) and add effects and Transitions then Render to a Lossless AVI format Like Uncompressed AVI or HuffYUV without any Quality Loss, But if you Tried Edit and add Transitions and effects to a Mpeg file then rendered as a Mpeg file you will allways Loose Quality because rendering to Mpeg is very Lossy,But you could render the edited Mpeg file with Transitions and effects to Uncompressed AVI to HuffYUV without Looseing Quality But if you then encoded the AVI to Mpeg then this is were you would loose the Quality....So if you are Trying to Find a format to Capture to then Uncompressed or HuffYUV AVI is Generally Better because there is No loss comeing from the Video signal from your Capture Card to the Captured AVI file and you Can edit and add transitions an such and render to the same Format and have no quality loss ,and then when you encoded the AVI to Mpeg you would Loose some Quality but every one does and there is no way arround it...You Might Say then Why Capture to AVI then encode to Mpeg when I can Just Capture to Mpeg and then Use a Mpeg editor to Cuz and Join the Files and save a Lot of Time and get the same Quality?? The answer is that Standalone software Mpeg encoders are Produce much better Quality encodes than a Mpeg capture Program can...Well I hope I Explained it so it was semi understandable, and hopefull it answers some of your Questions....Cheers


gcchaser: If I were you I would definately go for the "Canopus ADVC-50" it totally avoids the Problems you get from captureing from analoge from an analogue device like a TV Card.
It is definately the Very Best Bet for analogue to Digital...Here are a Few Reasons why it is Much better, Firstly the ADVC-50 Loack the Audio and Video together so there is Never any Sync Problems which you will have to deal with when captureing from a TV Card...
The ADVC-50 Captures directly to DV AVI format which Can allmost Losslessy Be edited and edited over again and easilly encoded to Mpeg..Plus you can use it to capture from Most Editing Programs Like Premier and Vegas Video and Ulead and Many Many More..I have heard Nothing But Rave reviews from the ADVC-100/50..
It will be my Next Capture device and I have owned Lots...Cheers

PS: Stay away from Hauppague I have had a Couple of there Cards and had nothing But Problems....

 

Minion..thanks for the canopus preference. I will need a good firewire card, I see some are not compatible. Any preferences regarding firewire cards? I saw the canopus advc 50 for $139 and the advc 100 for $199 on an Educational web site thats a great price. And I think that was free shipping and no sales tax. How does the advc 50 link internally with a firewire card? Know anything about the canopus advc 1394 combined card? I like the idea of internal devices vs external like the advc 100. What are the advantages of the advc 100 in your mind and what is the value of the extra outputs?

 

I have never owned one of these Cards so I don"t know everything about it But I do have a Friend who has the ADVC-100 and I have seen what it can do and have Played with it a bit and that is were I got most of my Knowlege about this Device...I believe the ADVC-50 Links to the Firewire card Like this, you hook your Analoge source into the ADVC-50 Input and then there is a Firewire Output from the ADVC-50 that you hook into the Firewire Card...The advantages from the ADVC-100 over the ADVC-50 is that you save a PCI slot with the 100 and the extra Outputs allow you to record to a VCR or to a Digital camcorder or even a standalone DVD recorder..Another advantage is that the 100 has a way to disable the Macrovision detection which is handy when captureing from Protected VHS Tapes or even DVD"s from a DVD Player..As For Firewire cards I delieve most Cards that are especially For DV Capture should work well..If you are Liiking for a High end firewire card then something like the "Canopus DV Raptor" Card would be best but they are a Bit Pricey, I have seen them for about $75 but I believe you can Probably get away with Useing any Firewire card that is For DV Capture and Some can be Found for under $20 on e-bay...well I hope this answer a couple Questions...Cheers

 

Minion..Thanks for the info. Where can I find good info on editing. I have many videos of my kids, some with 20 to 30 min of diferent kids doing different things. I would like to capture all my segments of one child and put then together on a VCD or DVD like a history of them growing up. can you make a file on a specific topic from different sources then edit it and burn to a disc?

 

Did you find any solution to the white banding/rectangulars banding showing up on the captured video ? I am having the same problem with a MSI ti4800se vtd card...

 

Does anyone use VDUB? What does it do. Has anyone used Roxio Movie Creator?
GrassyAss

 

I have the tv 2000 xp and i cant seem to get my audio and video in sync when going from VHS to my computer. I really have not messed with the caputre settings since I am not really sure what they do yet. Any beginners tips would be appreciated

 

Sync Problems when captureing Analogue Video are usually from one of 2 things, The First is Dropped Frames and the Second and what is usually the problem if you have not dropped any frames is the Time Lag between your Video capture Clock and your Audio Capture Clock....
You Capture Card Has a Sort of Built in Clock and it captures the Video useing that clock to keep Time..
And your Sound Card also has a Clock so it can keep Time when captureing the audio but the Problem comes in because these 2 Clocks rarely keep time exactly the same so over a period of time they Drift apart, It isn"t Much Like maybe a second per hour but that second differance is very Noticeable after a couple hours of Captureing..The Culprit more Often than not is a Crappy Sound Card like Sound that is integrated on to the MotherBoard will usually keep Bad Time but even a Good Sound card will still drift after a while...So the Best solution after getting a good sound card is to use Capture software that has a Feature to Correct for this Time Lag..Most Capture Software that can compensate for this time Lag either Dropps Frames and adds Frames to the Video to Keep sync with the Audio which is fine if you are Keeping the Captured File the way it is But as soon as you encode it to mpeg it will Go out of Sync, The other Sync Method Software uses to keep sync which is the best way is to Dynamicly resample the audio by adding or dropping audio Samples to keep sync, this is the best method when haveing to later encode the File to another Format....

So to answer your Question it would have helped if you told us what software you are useing to capture Video cuz How are wee supposed to tell you what setting to change if we don"t even know what software you are useing?? Well anyways If you go into the Capture settings and you see a setting that says something like "Master Stream" then set it to "Video" ,If it is good Software then this should help with the Sync problems but if there is no such setting then you are just going to have to Find other software....Cheers

 

Hi everyone I am rather new to this subject.
I was wondering if I could get a basic here's what you need (the best of the best)
I currently have:
ATI All-in-wonder 9000
AMD Athelon 2600+
111gb HD w/ 56.7gb to spare
4x DVD-burner

What I was wondering what would be the best method for delivering the highest quality video?
Once I have the raw high quality video, what program is the best for inserting transitions, cutting out static video and creating chapters that i can "NEXT>" to on my stand-alone DVD player.

I am currently using Pinnacle Studio v.8 for video capture, editing and burning---it sucks.
I would prefer to fit one hour of quality video per 4.7(4.36gb) DVD-R disk

 

I am using the Winfast PVR software for capturing which is probably my first mistake it seems like the software that comes with the hardware never is very good. I tried a version of Virtual Dub but could not capture at 720x480 so went with what would work. I don't know what other software is out there much less know how to use it. I read all of Minion's posts and scratch my head because I dont know what he is talking about, I am trying to very much though. Getting good software seems to be the first step so if someone tells me I will get it. By the way my audio and video are way off as soon as I start capturing. My sound card is a Creative Sound Blaster, not sure how good it is I pulled it out of a computer laying around. I would like to know more about this Dynamic Resampling.

 

I believe "Virtual VCR" uses Dynamic Resampling when trying to keep sync, but only when you set the "Video" as the "Master Stream".
If you choose Audio as the Master stream then it try"s Keeping synk by adding or Dropping frames from the Video ,which in Turn changes the Fram Rate which causes sync problem if you try to convert this File to another Format Like Mpeg...Cheers