VHS Tapes to DVD

pfh,
yes, let me know what you find out, as will I. By the way, regarding the previous reply from jddrake, we found out that the ConvertX is actually capturing in PCM audio but the OEM s/w interfacing with the ConvertX(Ulead and WinDVD) is responsible for converting it to AC3. See reply to your post entitled "GoCap question" on the Divx.com forum. The video encoding is independent of the s/w but the audio encoding IS dependent on the OEM s/w. That explains why either the OEM Ulead or the OEM WinDVD Creator software must be on your system in order to use GoCap. This revelation is a bit disappointing, as I previously held Plextor products in high regard. Oh well, it'll do the job though.

 

As i'm very new to this site, I have been trying to read through the past replies in this post to help me with my decision and they have helped me a lot.

From reading the replies it seems like the Canopus ADVC 110 is a winner, which im now thinking of buying. But I was wondering if its easy to use for a beginner? Otherwise I was thinking of buying the plextor convertx or Pinnacle studio AV/DV.

What do you guys think, all help is much appreciated.

 

The Canopus ADVC-100/110/300 are all pretty easy to use, Easier than Most because you won"t experience the problems you will with Capture Quality and Sync problems ect...It will work with any DV Capture program and is 100% compatible with Editing programs....

Cheers

 

The Canopus products seem to be regarded as very good. The units mentioned by minion are very popular and you find yourself in good company for support with a large user base. To my knowledge though, they are an AVI device and as such you would have the added step of encoding this to mpeg for eventual dvd creation. Results of this method can be of very good quality but I am only speaking from what others have said and done.
As of now I am personally foregoing the AVI route and capturing straight to mpeg.

 

Two schools of thought.

Mpeg-2 capture devices: Produce dvd-ready mpg's. Good quality from most sources, except for possible video tearing and colour loss at the edges. This chews up HUGE amounts of bitrate during encoding, which can degrade video quality.
Fix: Use a high end SVHS player such as the JVC 6000 series.

DV-AVI capture devices: Produce extremely high quality avi's at huge file sizes. Quality degradation occurs during mpeg-2 encoding, usually because of user error, unfamiliar software, misguided instructions, poor settings in the encoder, lack of patience, and/or satisfaction with second best.
Many will say that having to re-encode is a wasted step. Others will say that the best quality can be had this way, because of the HQ source, if encoded properly.

If time is your priority, get a hardware mpeg-2 encoding device.
If quality is your priority, get the DV-AVI device, AND a GOOD standalone encoder (no I don't mean winavi or santa!!!)

That said, there are ways to get great quality mpeg-2 encodings, depending on hardware. USB devices have fewer limitations than PCI cards, but some are equally tweakable.

After just a few years of doing this stuff, I will put any one of m mpeg-2 hardware captures up against anyone's direct DV-AVI mpeg-2 encodes.
I cannot however, compare them to captures done with $10,000 worth of hardware tBC's stabilizers, SVHS machines, etc...but this is supposed to be an enjoyable hobby, and I prefer to own a nice house, car, computer, and take a vaction now and then, not purchase the ultimate VHS to DVD hardware, so I can enjoy watching overused tapes until the disk melts
[/rant]

 

Thanks for the replies,

So can the Canopus ADVC 110 capture staight to mpeg? or DV? I just read in a PC Advisor mag that its best to capture into DV format as it is easier to edit? And appraently it is best done thorugh a PCI device. Is that the case?

Personally i'm not too sure abotu formats and stuff, I just want to edit my hi8 footage and burn them to dvd with the best possible quality. Also when you talk about time been the priority, is that the time it takes to encode a file or the time its going to make me actually sitting infront of pc and fiddling with settings? because I thought I can just leave the softare to do the encoding and come back later.

To edit the files I can get Adobe Premier pro. and encore, will that work?

Thanks again for your time,

 

I am fairly happy with the quality of my current method, but I dislike the time involved. The steps I take are as follows
1. Record the TV film onto SVHS tape - 2 1/2 hrs, unattended
2. Convert the SVHS tape to AVI file - 2 1/2 hrs, unattended
3. Cut edit the AVI version to remove commercials - 1/2 hr
4. Encode to MPG using 2-pass VBR mode - 8 hrs, unattended
5. Use authoring system to produce menuless DVD image - 1/2 hr
6. Burn DVD at 16x - 1/2 hr
7. Produce DVD label 1 hr

I am considering the purchase of a JVC DR-MH30S DVD recorder. This should eliminate the time needed for steps 2, 4, and 5, and it looks like I could remove my SVHS recorder and my current DVD player.

I welcome any responses to this posting.

 

You could always get an mpeg capture card that also has a tuner for grabbing tv. Record mpeg straight to HD- time depends on film length.
Edit with Womble- 10-20 minutes, no re-encode!
Author in favorite app.- 20 minutes.
Burn @ 4x- only takes me ~12 minutes.

The Canopus 110 does not do mpeg.

 

Yes you can use the ADVC-100 to capture Directly to Mpeg-2 but you would have to use a Software Mpeg Capture Program with the ADVC-100 which totally defeats the purpose of Haveing a Hardware DV Encoder Device....

When Useing CCE to encode to Mpeg-2 I can encode a 2 hour movie to Mpeg-2 in about an hour so it doesn"t nescessarilly have to be a 8 or 10 hour encodeing Step.....

Cheers

 

Minion, good suggestion. What I didn't mention is that during my encode I am doing a color correction with a simple gamma of +100 to brighten things up, and I am also normalizing the audio. Would CCE allow me to do that also? (My encoder is TMPGEnc XPress)

 

Hi,CCE is best used with a Frameserver because it doesn"t have a Lot of Settings and such for Resizeing and Color correction ECT even though the Latest version has a Lot more Features than previous Versions....

So You can use either Virtual-Dub or AVISynth to Frameserve the AVI file to CCE and with the Frameserver you can adjust the Color and Brightness and Resize ect.....

As for the Audio I personally no not use CCE to do the audio ,I usually extract the audio From My AVI file and Load it into Vegas Video 6 and then Add any Audio effects and Normalization and Finally render the audio as a Dolby Digital AC3 audio file which I use to author my DVD...
AC3 is the Best format for Makeing DVD"s anyways so I find it is best to use Vegas to Create the Dolby AC3 audio file and Vegas has a Dizzying array of Audio filters....

Cheers

PS: frameserveing is the Only way to use CCE to encode Video files that are Not AVI files Like (Mpeg,WMV,Ect)....

 

Minion, thanks for the info and advice. I forgot to add that, like you, I convert the audio to AC3 stereo, which I can do easily and seamlessly from TMPGEnc Xpress.

 

Thanks,

So which product would you say is better the ADVC 110 or 100. or the internal device which I only just found out about (thanks for that) the ACEDVio ??

Also what products do you currently use and which do you all prefer?

Thanks

 

Datavideo TBC-1000 with WinDV, and Mainconcept.
Hauppauge PVR-250/350/500.

 

Just want to say thanks to Minion and Reboot for their advice regarding GOP size and impact it has on quality. I surely do notice a difference. A GOP of 9 has a noticable diff. compared to one of 15. Also, Womble mprg2vcr can fix aspect ratio problems that may be encountered in Dvd Lab- after capping a custom mpeg that gets reported as 1:1 aspect ratio in Dvd Lab, for example, saving in Womble corrects this to 4:3.

 

I'm currently capping everything in mpeg-2, with a GOP of 5.
HUGE quality difference, and files are less than 10% larger!

 

Hmmm....will try 5 then. Recent cap of 2 hour 8 minute movie with Gop 9, came in at 5.6 gigs.
Geez, now I'm actually considering re-capturing some of my early transfers I did before with larger GOP's ! Doh!!!

 

I want to get the TurtleBeach Video Advantage PCI Video Capture card which comes with PowerDirector at Tiger Direct. I want to capture video from my camcorder and edit it and burn it on my computer to DVD. From what I can see from your discussion, PowerDirector can both capture the video and Burn the DVD. Will the software control my Lite-On DVD ReWriter? The DVD ReWriter came with Nero which I am beginning to despise.

 

Pezzer: Nothing could be easier than the Canopus setup. One side is PC the other Mac. Just follow the bounching ball and enjoy this great connection. May capture/convert connectors don't sync audio/video. Canopus does. There is also a German website (the link escapes me now) on Canopus. The website is also in English.

 

I took a look at the Canopus web site. Couldn't make heads or tails out of it which tells me that they are not trying to sell anything to me.