VHS Tapes to DVD

I stand corrected on GOP and it's influence on quality....sorry.
But for now, just to get chubbers capturing with success I over simplified the discussion. Once you've acheived some comfort in the process then start adjusting the GOP size keeping in mind the caveat mentioned by reboot. You'll find the "sweet spot" based on movie lengths vs. fitting it all on one dvd5 disc and compliancy regarding authoring app and player that you use.

 

I hope this is kosher, but I want to know how best to transfer VHS onto DVD. Before posting, I perused this thread first, but this thread goes all the way back to 2-3 years ago! So, some of the options mentioned may be obselete by current standards. Currently, what is the easiest way to get VHS onto DVDs?

I have Nero 6, an HP Pentium 4, 80 GB HD, 512 Mb RAM, and a DVD burner. I've been able to capture video off of a DV camcorder fine, but I wanted to start transferring VHS to DVD. At one point, my option was to transferthe VHS to the DV camcorder, then from the DV camcorder to DVD. But I wonder if I could go directly from VHS to DVD. Can someone point me to a post that could help me out? Much obliged!

 

With only a single hard drive you may experience sync issues and other sundry problems. If you insist on using your computer then I'd suggest trying a Hauppauge 250 PCI card and author the mpeg with Dvd Lab.
Of course the easiest solution these days is a stand-alone dvd recorder but you lose flexibility with editing and authoring with menus and such.
I currently use a Plextor 402 Convertx USB 2.0 but I also have a separate 40 gig drive devoted to the work.
If you do choose computer then look for a HARDWARE capable mpeg capturing card and plenty of free drive space.

 

What follows are the steps I take to convert VHS tapes to DVD

1. Connect the S-Video and L/R audio outputs of your VCR to the
inputs of a Canopus ADVC-110 digital video converter.
http://www.canopus.us/US/products/ADVC110/pm_advc110.asp
Connect the IEE 1394 (Firewire) port of the ADVC-110 to the 1394
port on your computer.

1A. If you are copying a copy-protected VHS tape (for archival
purposes) you may need to insert a stabilizer between your VCR and
ADVC-110. I use the FacetVideo Clarifier, but cheaper products are
available. http://www.facetvideo.com

Note - I have since found out that the ADVC-100 (an earlier version
of the ADVC-110 can be put into a mode where it will eliminate the
copy protection spikes. If, during a copy, the ADVC-100 status
light comes on or blinks, you should press and hold the Input
Select button for about 10 seconds. After you have released the
button, and if the Digital In light is on, press the button once to
switch the input to Analog In. I do not know if the ADVC-110 has
this "feature".

2. Use Pinnacle Studio 9 to capture the digital video output and
store it as an AVI file. The AVI file will be about 13 GB in length
for each hour of video.

3. Use TMPGEnc XPress to cutedit the AVI file (only necessary if
you want to remove unwanted scenes or commercials)
http://www.pegasys-inc.com/en/product/index.html

4. Use TMPGEnc XPress to transcode the AVI file to an MPEG file
which will fit on a DVD. If you purchase the Dolby Digital plug-in
(TMPGEnc Sound Plug-in AC-3), XPress can convert and compress the
audio to two-channel Dolby sound. For maximum video quality use two
pass VBR transcoding, which is a lengthy process and takes hours to
complete.

5. Use TMPGEnc DVD Author to create the DVD menu (if desired) and
chapters, and to burn the DVD.

6. Enjoy the DVD

 

pfh,
I read between the lines. For practical purposes, the GOP of 15 will suffice. That, coupled with Minion's advice should get me on my way to successful capturing. By the way, to answer a much previous post and question of yours regarding the Ulead OEM VideoStudio 8 that Plextor is now bundling with the ConvertX: I just received this software this past weekend and played around with it. According to Plextor AND my own experience with it, the software re-encodes, which makes it about as useful as the Intervideo junk Plextor previously bundled with their hardware. Plextor should be ashamed of themselves, but they love $$$. I downloaded DVD Lab Pro but have not had a chance to use it yet. I sure hope it comes through for me, as I have not yet seen a final DVD that I have burned that looked even AS GOOD as my original VHS sourcetape. That is kind of the point for buying a DVD burner and capture device: you want to get a final product AS GOOD as your original, if that is possible, which I am beginning to doubt.

 

Chubbers- check this thread discussion: http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/176334

The advantage Ulead has over Intervideo is the Mainconcept encoder it uses as opposed to Intervideo's. If you use it for capture [bold]only[/bold] then use Dvd Lab for authoring you won't run into the re-encode problems of the all-in-one solutions. Thus, your dvd creation time can be greatly reduced. It is my belief that the all-in-ones apps. re-encode during authoring for compatibility across all user bases and saves on tech support calls.
Alcoa from the above thread link is having success with Ulead after removing Intervideo.

 

pfh,
thanks for the info. I learned from experience that the all-in-one software pretty much gives you a product that is less desirable to watch than the original VHS tape. This had led me to believe that I would not be successful in actually creating a DVD which looked as good as the original source tape. At least not with junk such as WinDVD,Roxio and Ulead. I was tempted to sell the stuff I have and buy a stand-alone DVD recorder before finding this site. I have a friend who owns a DVD recorder and although he cannot author his VHS to DVD conversions, they look as good or better than the original VHS tape using the stand-alone recorder. I now feel pretty confident about using GoCap to capture and am looking forward to authoring using DVD Lab. I assume you guys are getting results with the combination of GoCap/DVD Lab that are equal or superior to the original VHS tape, right?

 

pfh,
Forgive me if this is transparent to everyone else, but since the ConvertX is a hardware encoder, why does GoCap need to utilize any part of Ulead software or WinDVD software in order to function?

 

GoCap serves as an interface for you to program the encoder which in turn gets used by the WIS chip on board of the ConvertX. The engineers at Plextor have developed the GoCap utility to work with the encoders supplied by the software they include with their units. If you know programming, there is an SDK for the WIS chip but alas, that is well beyond my ability! I'm what you might call a jack-of-all-master-of-none kinda guy. I'm afraid to say what my real job is!

As far as what I'm now getting dvd wise- yes, it looks as good as the vhs from whence it came. It's not as good as a commercial production dvd but I'm not expecting that from a vhs source anyways. Some people swear by the ease and quality they get from a dvd recorder and it is certainly an option. For example, you could record to disc then bring said disc to your computer and rip it back onto your drive and run it thru an authoring program to add menus then burn it back to disc. I'd just rather do it all from my computer to begin with. just depends.....personal preference. I like the fact my transfered vhs collection now has menus and chapter/scene selections.

Let me add one more thing. If I were you, I would download Dvd Shrink and Dvd Dycryptor. These 2 tools can come in handy when working with dvd's. I especially like Dvd Shrink for those captures that go beyond the 4.3gig limit of a blank dvd. If you find, after authoring your cap, that it is a little too big.......run it thru Dvd Shrink and your good to go.

 

This is my first post on this forum so forgive me if this has been explained elsewhere.

I understand that gocap is an interface to the convertx to set the encoder parameters. But that encoder is inside the convertx. The codec inside WinDVD or Ulead shouldn't have anything to do with the codec in the convertx. Therefore I don't see why gocap should have to use anything from WinDVD or Ulead unless it is utilizing the drivers so that gocap can "talk" to the convertx. Does that seem reasonalbe?

 

Much like a programmable graphics chip on a video card the 7007SB WIS chip needs software to make it work. There isn't really any software inside the convertX. There is actually a Phillips decoder chip inside as well. This is my understanding and what I was told by Plextor was that GoCap requires the OEM s/w.
Here's some info to ponder: http://www.wischip.com/silicon_7007sb.php

 

FYI, this topic was pulled from the link you gave above from Alcoa. I read the same thing on Plextor's site that GoCap required the OEM and that is what has made me curious about this. It just doesn't make any sense to me unless GoCap uses the OEM interface to communicate with the convertx.

There no software in the convertx like what you normally think of as software but the WIS chip is programmed to encode to mpeg2 among other formats and that is done by software on the chip itself. you could call it firmware.

what i don't understand is if GoCap is having to use the codec in WinDVD or Ulead, then what is the point in having a hardware based encoder? The point of a hardware based encoder is that the hardware does the encoding. The WIS chip is probably a FPGA that is programmed to encode the data to the formats specified for the convertx. That is completely independent of the WinDVD or Ulead software.

Are you suggesting that GoCap is pulling the parameter options, e.g. resolution, bitrate, etc., from WinDVD or Ulead so it can then tell the WIS chip which parameters to use?

 

My thinking is that the 7007SB chip is programable via outside s/w cause there are no true firmare updates. Plextor.com states that firmware updates are done thru driver updates not the true firmware updates we are familiar with. GoCap is dependant on the [bold]encoder[/bold] from Ulead or Intervideo not nesc. the codecs that come with those. Therefore the parameters you input for encoding are carried out by the 7007SB. Now, what you use to set those parameters is up to you- GoCap, Ulead, Intervideo, or others that have added support for the Convertx.

 

I'm confused. Then why buy a harware encoder if your software's (WinDVD or Ulead) encoder is going to dictate how it's encoded? Maybe i'm missing the point. This might be something to pose to Plextor Dirk over at divx.com.

 

The 7007SB [bold]is the hardware[/bold]. Instead of s/w manipulating your computer's cpu to do the encoding you are giving instructions to a separate chip- in this case it's a 7007SB produced by WIS and assembled onto a pcb. Thus, your encode is done before it's handed off to the cpu. A s/w encode that you are thinking of is performed by a computers cpu while at the same time it is handling the other tasks required by the system. Like I said, graphics chips operate in a similar fashion when given specific instructions by a given application. That's why they call them programmable

 

Couldn't agree with you more. I still don't think the MainConcept encoder in Ulead has anything to do with the WIS chip.

 

Chubbers and anyone else interested FYI:

Quote from reboot's earlier post- "Minion: Good advice, with a caveat...
Not all standalone players will accept a non-standard GOP.
Not all authoring apps will accept a non-standard GOP.
I do part time work capturing 1152x864 mpeg-2 from specialized cams. This video is then used to catalog what's on the film. It needs specific frame accurate stop motion, thus I encode at a 1 frame GOP.
You can imagine the file sizes of a 4 hour video, at that aspect, and GOP, but the quality is better than DVD, at 17.6 minutes per DVDR5, and 33 minutes per dual layer."

Changing the GOP number from 15 to 12 In GoCap. When loading into Dvd Lab for authoring It reports a 1:1 aspect ratio. This aspect ratio will fail upon compiling your dvd. You need 4:3 or 16:9 for dvd compliancy and success in Dvd Lab AFAIK.

Just to give you one caveat example.

 

pfh,
thanks for the information. I appreciate that. Will save me from making a coaster. Thanks again; you and others have given me a lot of good advice that has been very helpful....Kevin

 

pfh,
Dumb question: can you change the aspect ratio indepently and circumvent the non-compliance issue?

 

That's what I'm trying to figure out next. I think that the aspect ratio flags in the mpeg header can be changed before authoring? Or is it the headers in a dvd? .................more research.