VHS Tapes to DVD

I recently bought a Xpert DVD Maker. The providers (source) does not give you much details to help you out. The package says could capture "real time MPEG4", so I understand that only will capture with MPEG4 format from VHS into DVD when you are capturing and recording (burning) into a DVD. Does any one has some related experience?
I have already burned a couple of DVD from my VHS, within the softw. that comes along with this A/V capture card called Power Producer2, there is an option of video quality determined by the time (60 min, 120 min or 180 min), then to burn these DVD I have used the 60 min option, which seems the best quality available, however, the final production I got is not as good as I expected.

 

GuidoRio: Your card can capture to pretty much any format depending on the Software you use and the Codecs you have installed...

Don"t use "Cyberlink PowerProducer 2.0" if you can help it because only getting 60 minutes on a DVD is Crap as you should be able to fit up to 2+ hours on a DVD....
Try useing something like "InterVideo WinDVR 3.0" to capture your Video and when useing the 1/2 DVD Capture profile you can get up to 4 Hours on a DVD and useing the 1/4 DVD profile you can get about 6 hours on a DVD...And after captureing your Video use a DVD authoring program like "DVDLab" to put the Captured Video on to DVD with Menu"s and Chapters.....

 

Thxs. Minion.

Nonetheless, would not I loose quality if recording in other video quality rather than the option of 60 minutes I have in my Cyberlink Poser Producer 2?.

The purpose I persue is to improve as much as possible the video quality, so I can feel confortable having good video quality copies I can show later.

Have you ever gotten a good video quality recording from VHS?, what did you use? and what video capturing card you've utilised?.

I am convincing this card does not support MPEG4 capturing format !!!, although it says in its box. I believe if I capture with a MPEG4 format the video quaility would be enhanced to MPEG2.

 

Your Card is just a regular Analogue Capture device so you CAN capture to Mpeg-4 if you used a Mpeg-4 codec Like the DivX or XviD codecs which are both a Form of Mpeg-4....

CyberLink PowerProducer used a very Inefficient Mpeg encoder so it uses much more Bits than it has to to achieve the quality if Produces...

When useing an efficient Encoder you can get the same or better quality useing a Much Lower Bitrate which Means that you will have Higher Quality with Smaller File sizes so you Can fit more Video on a DVD...

So if you used a More efficient Mpeg capture Program you could achieve the same or Better quality with Much Lower File sizes....

Pluss it is Stupid that the Program doesn"t allow you to adjust the Capture Bitrate so you can Customize the Bitrate to the Length of your Movie so the Movie Fits on a DVD..
Pluss PowerProducer only lets you capture to one of the DVD Standard which totally limits your capture Options as there are 4 Different DVD Standards that can be used to create DVD"s and the Lowest resolution of these Standards allows you to get a Minimum of 6 hours of VCD quality Video on a DVD.....

I personally use a More Complex Capture Method which takes a Lot longer but it Produces Very good Quality DVD"s and I can fit Much more than 60 minutes on a DVD...I generally Put between 2 and 4 hours on each DVD depending on the DVD standard I use....

What I do is I capture to a Low Compression AVI format useing the HuffYUV Lossless Codec....
And that I use a High quality Mpeg encoder to encode the AVI file to Mpeg2/DVD Format useing some Video Filters to clean up the Image and to remove any Noise and adjust the Color and Contrast ect...
After Cleaning up the captured file and encodeing it to Mpeg2 I use DVDLab to add my Menu"s and Chapters and to author the Files to DVD.....

Right now I have a Pretty Cheapo PCI Capture card called the "PixelView X Capture" which uses a High quality 10Bit Decoder chip so the Quality is Pretty Good...I picked up this Card on Ebay for $40 Brand New.....

Cheers

 

Minion - have you used, or do you know anything about VEGAS 5.O and VEGAS DVD architect? Thanks

 

nograde1: yes I do know about Vegas 5 but I don"t use DVD architect 2 very much even though I have it installed...I mostly have it installed because it adds Mpeg1/2 encodeing and Dolby AC3 encodeing features to Vegas 5....

What do you need help with??

 

Minion - I have access to a computer that has both Vegas 5.0 and DVD architect. Following this forum for a while now it seems that alot of people's issues are software/codec related if their computer wasn't to blame. These 2 programs are around $800. I'm wondering if they are as good as SONY says they are for:

1 - analogue and digital capture.
2 - movie creation
3 - DVD author

Thanks

 

Well Vegas isn"t for analogue Capture even though you can do it with Vegas but you can only Capture Uncompressed AVI with Vegas when captureing analogue which for most poeple isn"t very Practical because of the Huge File sizes.....

For editing Vegas is Very good and it has a Lot of Nice transitions and Filters.....
It also has a Very Good Mpeg encoder and an awesome Dolby 5.1 Mixer and encoder....

DVD Architect is Good but I still get Much better results useing DVDLab.....

I use Vegas For most of My editing projects because of it"s ease of use and it high quality rendering and there are also quite a few effects packages for it that are Pretty good.....

 

Thanks Minion - is it worth getting a VCR with s-video out if you are trying to capture only VHS not SVHS tapes? Thanks

 

Yes it is as S-Video signals are much Crisper than regular Composite RCA signals are but it can be hard to find a VCR with a S-Video output, I have seen a few DVD/VCR combos with them but most of the others are quite a bit more expensive than a regular cheapo VCR"s.....

 

Hi ppl
I'm trying to convert my old vhs tapes to dvd. I', using my digital camcocorder to convert the signal and Pinnacle Studio 9.

When I try to edit the video, Studio won't do it, because it says that "Pal is not activated"... I've tried to contact Pinnacle, but I'm waiting for an answer for one month.
I don't care if i need any kind of crack or whatever.

Can anyone help, plz????
Thanks

 

This is because you have the NTSC Version of Studio 9 which is only good in Japan and North America and your Camcorder Captures to Pal Format which is used in Europe and Asia which is Probably were you Live which means you have to get a Pal version of Studio 9...
You are better off useing a seperate Capture Program to capture with ,One that can capture both Pal and NTSC like "Scenalyzer Live" and if you have to do any editing then you will have to get different editing Software.....
I personally Think Studio 9 Stinks and there are Much better editors out there....Cheers

 

Thanks for your quick answer.
Do you recomend any software???
I've seen your history in this forum and.... I think you would give a good advice..
Thanks again.

 

There are Lost of Good Capture/editing Programs on the Market like Adobe Premier Pro and Vegas Video 5 or AviD Xpress or Canopus Edius...The problem with these Programs are that they are So expensive at between $600 and $1000 and they are Fairly hard to learn how to use.....
One Program that is a Lot easier to use and is about half the Price of these Programs is "Ulead Media Studio Pro 7"..This Program is Broken up into 6 seperate programs so you don"t have a crowded Interface like you do with Programs Like Premier Pro or Edius so it is a Lot easier to use...

It is Broken up into a Capture Module,a Video Editing Module, a Audio editing Module, a CG Animation Module, a Video Paint Module, a Module for Burning Disk images and a DVD authoring Module ,Which makes it a Lot easier to use and to learn.....

There are also some OK basic editing Programs available that are fairly inexpensive and still very Functional Like "Video Edit Magic" and "Main Concept Easy Video Editor(EVE)" There are also others that are Fairly good for Basic Editing...If you want you can PM me and I"ll send you some links were you can check out the different features of these and other different editors.....Cheers

 

VEGAS 5 question - When I rendered a movie in the AC3 template I only got audio when I opened it in DVD Architect. When I rendered a movie in the Widescreen DV template I only got video when I opened it up in DVD Architect. What do I need to do to get video and audio on one rendered file to creat a DVD in DVD Architect.

 

I can not tell you much about working with DVD Architect because I never use it but I know most Good DVD authoring Programs accept seperate audio and Video files, they actually prefer it because the Files have to be Muxed a certain way....

If you want to Put the audio and Video together into a single Mpeg file with audio and Video then you can use the "Simple Multiplex" feature in "Tmpgenc Pluss"..
Just run Tmpgenc and go to "File" to "mpeg tools" to "Simple Multiplex" and Load in the audio and Video files and click "Run" and it will Multiplex them into a Single Mpeg file....

I personally use "DVDLab" for authoring My DVD"s because it is Very easy to use but has all of the Features that High end Programs do and it will accept Seperate M2V Video and AC3 audio files, If you load a Mpeg file into DVDLab it will actually seperate it into seperate audio and Video files before you can do anything with it....

Sorry I can"t help but you should maybe go and Download the 30 day demo of DVDLab and see if you Like it as it is a Lot easier to use than DVD Architect but can do anything it can do and Probably even better and a Lot easier...

Cheers
_X_X_X_X_X_[small]It"s better to be Pissed Off than Pissed On!!![/small]

 

I am new to this whole process and hope you'll be patient with me. Despite trying to learn how to take VHS and putting them onto DVD, the more I read, the more confused I get --

We have a fast speed computer system (only a year old) and just got a huge drive dedicated to video -- we also got a Video Capture device so we wouldn't have to go through the DV camcorder. We tried Studio 9 -- I know how many of you feel about this program, but it seems to work fairly easily for cutting out the stuff we don't want. But when we went to burn the video onto DVD+R disc and then played them, the picture/color quality was really bad -- the red/orange color in particular wobbled and flashed. After some more research we got Nero6 and tried it again -- even though the picture quality seemed to be better (at least I thought so -- and it was much smoother at creating the DVD), the red/orange color was doing the same thing.

Is there anything I can do to fix this with the programs I have? I can't justify spending any more money this close to the Holidays -- but I have some old family videos in addition to VHS videos of my kids' favorite shows I want to archive before they degrade anymore.

Please be kind --

 

This Problem is due to the Extremely Bad Quality encoders that Both Studio 9 and Nero use....

You should Capture and do your editing in Studio 9 and then render your Project as an AVI File, Then use a Good Quality encoder like Tmpgenc or MainConcept to encode the File to DVD Compliant Mpeg2 and then load the Mpeg2 file back into Studio 9 and Author it to DVD, But if Studio 9 tried to re-encode your Mpeg2 file then you should scrap useing Studio 9 and use a real DVD Authoring Program like "DVDLab" which will Not re-encode you Files.....

Both Nero and Studio 9 are Low level Consumer Programs and will not Produce any sort of Acceptable Quality..Even a Cheapo editor like "Video Edit Magic 4.0" will run circles arround Studio 9 and Nero....
So if you keep useing Low end Software you will keep Producing low quality Video....
If the Only editing you are doing is Cutting and Joining files then you can actually Produce very good quality DVD"s useing Mostly freeware and Shareware Software...Like you could use "Virtual-VCR" to Capture your Video to AVI useing the HuffYUV Codec and then use "Virtual-Dub to do any Cutting and Joining and then use Tmpgenc to encode it to DVD Mpeg2 and use the Trial version of DVDLab to Put the Movie on to DVD with menu"s and Chapters.......

 

Thanks Minion --

Does Nero6 have the same recoding problems that Studio9 has? Did I waste $200 on the 2 programs -- are they good for anything?

And were could I find the Shareware/freeware programs (I'm a complete know-nothing...I actually thought Nero6 was good)? Most of my making DVDs is from simple VHS with a little cutting -- there's only one that is very very badly deteriated...an old video taken from old 8mm film years and years ago.

Thanks again --

 

They are Both Useable Programs but they will not Produce very High Quality...It comes down to the Quality of the Mpeg encoder the Program uses to encode your Files to the Mpeg2/DVD Format ,If the encoder is a Low quality encoder(Which both Studio 9 and Nero use) then it will not Produce very high quality DVD"s especially if your Footage is old and degraded...And $200 is Nothing when it comes to Software Prices, the encoder I use retails for $2000 and all it does is encode files to Mpeg1/2 format, and Most good editing Programs can run from $300 to $1000...I"m lucky in this regard because I work as a Video editor so I have access to Lots of good Professinal quality software so I get to use some of the Newest and Best software titles.....

You can find most Freeware and shareware Programs by just doing a Google search, or if you can"t find what your Looking for you Can PM me with your e-mail address and I can send you some Links to some freeware Programs....Cheers