VHS Tapes to DVD

Our systems at work have gone down today, and ive just spent best part of 5 hours reading through this one post.
Thanks to all you guys for all your info (specially Minion, who really should be on commision for his advice !).

Im new, getting into this, and what im after is to take all my old home movies (currently on VHS), and put them onto DVD (reataining picture/sound quality.)

I have a PC, and a video.I dont have a DVD Writer yet.I do have Nero 6 on the PC. and have this one question :
-If you had about $850 (which is my budget), and wanted to do what i want, what would you buy :
Im guessing I need the following :

1 - some sort of capture device (Internal video capture card, or external - Is it better to get internal, or external,or is there no difference ?).

2 - A good DVD Writer (im guessing dual format / dual layer)

3 - And finally some very good software, to enable me to capture, and write to DVD. (Like I say , I have Nero 6, but have read some not altogether good reports on its quality).

As always, any advice greatly appreciated !!

Cheeers,
MadBadPiglet

 

I'm using since a few weeks pinnacle studio 9 and moviebox for editing en burning DVD and output to VHS tape. (PAL - system)
Before that I used a pinnacle DC10+ capture card and studio 1.6.

My computer is a pentium 4, 2,8 Mhz, ATI Radeon 7500, Windows XP home and I use an external 120G harddisk USB 2.0 for the video files

However, I have 2 problems
1. Capturing with the Pinnacle moviebox from my analog camera gives some disturbance at the bottem of the screen (captured video) So should I use again my old DC10 card?

2. The DVD (Pinnacle studio 9) is working without problems on my computer, but when playing on my home DVD player (Pioneer, able to play -R/-RW/+R/+RW) there is some horizontal disturbance on the screen.
Same problem when I put the project on TAPE (via Moviebox)

Please some help ?

Thanks, Bart

 

Hey Minion - Vegas is great! Small problem though. I captured a 44gig .avi file which leaves me about 40% available space on my HD. Now I can't defrag it. I get an error that windows can't defrag the 44gig .avi file. I need to capture a little more but the HD is to frag'd to capture well. ??? Thanks

 

NoGrade1 - You addressed Minion, but I hope it's OK if I give an answer to your question. You should not bother to defrag large files (files > 300 MB) because it takes too long to defrag these super large files. I am using Diskeeper V9.0 to do my defragging, and it has a place to enter files or folders that should be excluded from defragging. Just make sure that your disk is defragged prior to creating your large AVI file.

 

Minion, I have never used a forum before, so please bear with me. This particular area is my main interest. I am well past Medicare eligibility and have quite a number of pre-recorded VHS movies. I have been following this thread for about 5 or 6 hours and see your name continuously. My goal is to convert all of my VHS movies to DVDs. I started about 1.5 years ago with one of Pinnacle Studio's earliest VHS to MPEG-1 products. It was a total waste of time and I tossed it. I then tried ADS' Instant DVD USB. I was able to satisfactorily convert about 25 VHS tapes, but it averaged around 6 hours to do each movie. I would like to speed up this process, but not so much that I get junk quality. I recently purchased Iomega's Super DVD QuikTouch Video Burner 16X Dual-Format USB 2.0 External Drive. This product appeared to do what I was trying to do, decent quality much faster. It, unfortunately, did not do what it was advertised to do. I was never able to capture, convert, and burn with one touch. It did work if I did each step manually which was somewhat faster. But, at my age, faster is better and easier. I am not a computer whiz, but believe there must be some way of doing what I am attempting. I returned the Iomega product today.

Sometime in November, Sony is releasing it's VRDVC10 DVDirect burner, which can be used without or with your computer. It will come packaged with Nero's products and I have seen your comments about Nero. I have two questions. Do you believe that the Sony product may be the answer? If not, what would you recommend?

I have a 4 year old Dell model 8250 with a Pentium 4, 2.53 GHz, 1 GB DDR memory, and a 120 GB hard drive. In addition, I have an unopened Pinnacle Studio MovieBox Deluxe version 9.1. I am retired, so I need to stay in the $200 to $300 price range. I plan to return the Pinnacle product if it is of no value. I had read an article in PC Magazine about the 9.1 version and it praised the 9.1 version.

I apologize for this long winded message, but will greatly appreciate any and all assistance you provide. Many thanks. dragon424

 

I believe your Very Best and easiest Bet is to Buy a Standalone DVD Recorder and Record directly from your VCR to the DVD recorder, the DVD Recorder also doubles as a Regular DVD Player and as a DVR (Digital Video recorder so you can record TV shows)...
They are Basicly just like a VCR but they record to DVD as opposed to VHS Tapes...

You can Pick one up for about $200 to $250 and I hear the Quality is Quite good and they are Very easy to use...and depending on the Model there are different Quality settings so you can Fit anywere from 2 to 6 hours of Video on each DVD..
Also If you need to do any editing you can also transfer the Movies to your PC useing your DVD Drive and edit them and the Author them back to DVD...

Like this One can record up to 8 hours per DVD and it has 6 Different Recording Modes and you can Probably get it for under $200:
http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=32864&item=5727776376&rd=1

This one looks good also:
http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=32864&item=5727867441&rd=1

Doing the Capture to PC method Is allways going to take a few hours for each Movie but this way you will be Recording Directly from your VCR to DVD...

I hope this helps....Cheers

 

 ... Here is a link that reviews DVD recorders ...

http://www.dvdrecorderworld.com/reviewlist.php

 ... PS - Stay away from the GoVideo model ... I've had two friends go through several of these and finally go to a different brand ...

 ... Personally, I've used a LiteOn LVW-5005 to transfer countless family VHS to DVD and use it daily to satisfy my Tv recording fetish ... It's test is here ...

http://www.cdrlabs.com/articles/index.php?articleid=29

 ... and I purchased it here ...

http://www.compuadds.com/Product.asp?prodcode=S-996728

 

Does anyone know what causes color shifting when capturing from VHS? I'm using TV 2000 right now and on certain tapes the color washes in & out, for example yellow will turn to green & vice versa. Is this just do to a lower quality capture card? Any help is appreciated.

 

Catfreak, with the LiteOn 5005 can you use your PC audio-out to record an audio CD that works in a car cd player? (My audio-out would be from a Sound Blaster card)

If I am reading the specs right, this is possible on the model 5006, but not on the 5045. On the basis of Minion's recommendation, I plan on picking up a LiteOn LVW, but am not sure which model to get. (It looks like there are at least three 5006 models for example)

Recording audio CDs directly, as well as DVDs of old VHS tapes, would be great -- especially since I would have the option of processing the DVD further on my PC. I'm hoping I can input it into DVDXMaker.

 

Have anyone heard of the new V-Savior USB 2.0 External Pioneer DVR-108 Burner With Built In MPEG-II Video Capture Encoder? Is this machine is good to buy? And Ulead VideoStudio 7.0 SE software comes in the package. Is Ulead VideoStudio 7.0 a good software for video editing?

thanks

 

http://www.dvd-supply.com/usb-2-0-mpeg-ii-software-encoding-video-capture---burner-combo.html

This is where you could see the new V-Savior USB 2.0 External Pioneer DVR-108 Burner With Built In MPEG-II Video Capture Encoder.

 

Hi Catfreak, Sorry for the long delay, but wish to thank you for your input. I have decided to delay any buying since the entire subject area seems to be in a state of flux. It appears that more and more burners are becoming available with video cards. Thanks, also, for the advice on the GOVideo model. I searched several sites and found a lot of people who were unhappy with that product. I feel as if I have tried a bunch of bad products and can wait a little longer. Thanks!

 

 ... luker ... I've never tried to record CDs using my computer as an output ... I have, however, used a cassette deck (with RCA output jacks) to successfully record music ... I've also used a turntable to record CDs with a record as a source ...

 ... I have been led to believe that the only difference between the LVW-5005 and the LVW-5006 is that the 5005 is for the USofA market and that the LVW_5006 is the European model complete with SCART connectors ...

 ... Here's a good forum for Lite On users ...

http://forum.liteonit.com.tw/

 

Catfreak, thanks for the link to the Lite On forum.

It looks to me that the LVW-5006, unlike the 5005, includes All Write Technology which "allows writing to all media." The 5006B is the SCART model, while the 5006A and 5006D are both listed as "standard" models on the manufacturer's web site.

The only place I could find selling the 5006 in the States was Radio Shack, but no local stores carry them.

 

All, Hope u dont mind if I join this discussion as I cannot get the quality I want from VHS tapes. I have tried DVC80 and this is not delivering the quality to the PC and have now tried using my new Sony DVD recorder to create VOB files that are excellent and equally as good as the VHS tape. I am then losing quality converting to MPG and have just followed the suggestion about Huffy (250Gb hard drive very useful for this). However, ULEAD 7 will not read resulting AVI file even though it plays and looks good. Any thoughts?

 

stuartp: The DVC80 is Probably the Worst capture device ever created so it isn"t surpriseing that you aren"t getting very good Quality from it, the device only captures at a max resolution of 352+240 which is only a Quarter of the Standard Resolution used for DVD"s so the Quality would be very low....

If you are Captureing with a DVD recorder to VOB files then you should not loose any Quality at all when converting them to Mpeg because VOB files are just Mpeg2 files...Why are you useing Ulead Video Studio 7 anyways?? You can edit these VOB files and Burn them back to DVD with menu"s and Chapters without any Quality Loss at all if you did it properly and you don"t have to convert the VOB files at all to Put them on DVD....

Why don"t you explain what you are Trying to do and How you are Doing it and then I can tell you were you are Going wrong and how to do it without any quality loss and without much fuss....

Cheers

 

I use Ulead to edit and create DVD's from DV. Just assumed that this was the tool to use to edit VHS files before creating DVD backups. What software can I use to edit VOB's directly?

 

What I recomend for any VOB or Mpeg editing is a Native Mpeg editor called "Womble Mpeg video Wizard 2003" it will edit and even add effects and Transitions without affecting the quality and it will render your files in a matter of Minutes as opposed to many hours with other editors.....

Cheers

 

You are a star, I will give it a go. I have been missing the bloody obvious here. I realised that VOB was MPG2 but was trying to make the whole thing more complicated than it is. Got the whole DV thing really sorted, just this VHS stuff been giving me a headache. BTW, you wanna buy a DVC 80?.....rofl!!

Thanks for the help, I'll let you know how it goes.

Just a side note, the new Sony DVD recorder is excellent but for one thing, occasionally jams when fast forwarding DVD's recorded on PC, otherwise top quality kit.

Regards

SP

 

 ... lurker ... My LVW-5005 has "All Write Technology" so I'm not exactly sure what the difference between the 5005 and 5006 models really is ...

 ... 5005 ...

http://www.liteonit.com.tw/DC/english/lvw_5005/lvw_5005.htm


 ... 5006 ...

http://www.liteonit.com.tw/DC/english/lvw_5002_5006/lvw_5002_5006.htm