VHS Tapes to DVD

mbanx: Noise Looks Like Backround Static so useing a Temporal Smoother can help reguce the Noise but will Blurr the Image a Bit so adding a Sharpen filter will help with the Blurring...You should be able to see the results in the Virtual-Dub Window before rendering the File...You actually don"t have to render the File in Virtual-Dub because you can Frameserve the File with the Filters to your Mpeg encoder useing Virtual-Dub which will save you times and Quality cuz you will not be rendering to a New File...To Frameserve useing Virtual-Dub you first have to run the "AuxSetup.exe" file in the V-Dub folder and then click "Install Handler" and then Click "OK" and then Run V-Dub and Load in your File and add your Filters and then when you are ready to encode the File to Mpeg go to "File" to "Start Frameserver" and then Click "Start" and then give the Frameserver File a Name but give it a ".vdr" extention...Now Run your Encoder, If you are useing Tmpgenc to encode you will have to First go to "Options" to "Enviromental Settings" to "Vfapi Plugins" and Disable the "Direct show File Reader" ..
Now you can Load the Frameserver file into Tmpgenc and encode it to Mpeg like Normal ...You can also use the MainConcept encoder with V-Dub frameserver files and CinemaCraft encoder....
DJ2: Did you Make sure that you had "Line In" selected in the Windows Record settings?? You much configure windows to record from the Line In Port or Aux port (Depending on the one you are useing) on your Sound Card, and you Must do the same in your Capture Software......Cheers

 

I now have some great captures in .avi footage from VCR tapes. I have ROXIO and Windows Movie maker. Both are junk. Is there a reasonably priced editing software out there that has a full timeline and some capability? thanx

 

Studio 8/9 (Pinnacle) is a good one, nice priced,
encoding is good, you can even "author" with this
one, although TMPGEnc DVD Author, or DVDLab are
better ones..

 

Folks....this is a great thread - espcially Minion's knowledge...thanks.

I need to digitize and encode clips from VHS tapes to stream on the Web.

I basically will be capturing 8-10 min. clips from standard VHS tapes...encoding them to RealMedia and Windows Media files (one each for dial-up and hi-speed)...and posting them to stream (not download).

I have the basics of the process down. I have digitzed and posted a few as a test (using a Dazzle 150 product and MovieMaker)...quality is marginal to okay.

HOWEVER....I am wondering which points in the process are most important for final STREAMING Quality (as sharp/clear as possible, anyway).

Are the most important componnets the VCR Player, the Capture Device hardware, or the encoding software?

In other words....is the VCR player that important...should I get some high end player (hard to find these days)....or should I put the money in the capture card....or other?

Any advice appreciated.
THANKS!

 

Generally Speaking the Quality will depend mostly on the Quality of the Source VHS Tape and the Quality of the Capture Device...The format you capture to will also Impact the Final Quality, But useing a Good Capture device is one of the Biggest things you can do to achieve the best Possible Quality...Cheers

 

Thanks very much.

Any suggestions of a better-than-average capture device? I am using a Dazzle 150 now but have seen several others.

As far as software, I may be able to get a free copy of the new Pinnical9....my main need, really, is simply encoding the captured file to an .rm or .wmv file.

I have noticed that the free encoding software from Microsoft and Realplayer will capture from a compatible device (of which the Dazzle products are not).

Is it better to use the actual MS or Real software to do the capture/encoding (if I really do not need to do editing) and a good hardware capture device rather than the the software that is bundled with whatever capture hardware I use?

Thanks Much!

 

Heres a new one. I capture to avi format and it sems to be working but when I replay it it's all garbled...like colorful machine code. ?????/

If I capture to any other format or compressed format like wmv everything is good.

I'm using a Canopus 100 and I've got a pretty goos system (1.6ghz, 64mb graphics, 512mb ddr)

Am I looney or shouldn't I be able to view an AVI file through Windows Movie Maker, Real One, Sonic, etc.???

Any input would help.

Thanks
Brad

 

Minion, you should write a book. I'd buy it.

I've been reading everything I can find, but one thing that cannot be answered with words is what "high quality" means regarding analog video capture (well, I suppose it would be possible, but the words might not mean much to me). Are some of you capturing video from VHS tapes that is indistinguishable from the original? It would be very helpful to me if there was just one clip out there that could be downloaded for comparison. Anyone have one to offer?

 

Hi, I suppose Good quality allways depends on the quality of the source because you can never get better than the original but you can get pretty Close and useing some filters on the Video after captureing you can sometimes clean up the video so it looks a Bit better...You can Get close to DVD Quality doing analoguie Capture from Satalite or Digital cable or even Just a Good Strong Cable Signal if you have a good enough capture device..VHS Resolution is about that of VCD (352+240)so it will never be that High Quality But Satalite and Digital cable are transmited in the same resolution as DVD(720+480) so you can get Much better quality captures...Cheers

 

I guess to get best quality, you should have a good
VHS recorder/player Super-VHS is even better,
and also, one that has a TBC (Time Base Corrector)
to "clean up" old tapes, due to "drop outs" caused
by dust, damage, or magnetic fields, sometimes a
"drop out" is in the sync part of your tape, if
possible, TBC corrects this, and also "cares" you
have a stablelized sync signal, during, playing
your vhs tape.
There are also "standalone" TBC's, you can place
between your VCR, and capture device.

 

Minion you should write a book you have a lot of valuble knowledge and I too would buy it. My question is how to avoid my picture becoming pixelated ( I think that is the term I want). I have tried to create an epsiode DVD and compressed the files with DVD2one which I think was my problem. I have capped at full 720x480 ran it through a few filters and it looks good on my computer screen. Should I just leave it alone? I want a good picutre when I view it on a larger tv screen.

 

Well DVD2One doesn"t have the Best Compression Engine and you can get a Blocky Picture if you use it on a DVD that is Over say 2 hours I have never used these types of programs to compress Captured Files but I"m sure they don"t produce the best Results...You say you Captured at 720+480 and it looks good on your Monitor, If the file Is in the correct format for DVD and will Fit on a DVD then go ahead and author it to DVD, If you have to encode the File because it is too big to fit on a DVD-r or it isn"t in the Correct format then make sure you use a High quality Mpeg encoder and calculate the Bitrate you will need before you encode so you can Maximize the space on the DVD-R........Cheers

 

Hmmm... well, I was hoping to do this without too much of an investment, but maybe that just isn't possible. I know there are a number of posts like this, but what I really need to know then is where the bottleneck is in my system. The VHS quality is excellent, so that's not the problem, and I'm not trying to copy anything that's Macrovision protected so that's not a problem either.
My system has a 2500+ Barton core (on a DFI LanParty NFII Ultra MB), and an MSI VTDR128 GC. I have a Seagate 120GB barracuda SATA HD (that's the only HD, and I'm a little afraid to defrag since that's always caused problems for me in the past).
I try to capture straight from the gc (s-video, composite both), and the various software I've tried include Intervideo Winproducer, Roxio DVD6, NeroVision, and the MSI Media Center Dlx II package. I've tried avi, mpg, AVI DV I, and AVI DVII; good quality, best quality, 720:480 and lower. The avi and mpg are barely watchable, imo, though they at least have an acceptable framerate; the avi dv's have miserable framerates. Pixelation is pretty bad all around.
It just occurred to me that I could also try disabling the 2nd monitor, but I wouldn't think that was taxing the system too much. The video feed appears excellent on the monitor, just doesn't capture well.
If anyone is willing to respond to this you have my sincere thanks. What this all boils down to is whether I'm getting the results I should expect from my system, or if I was just expecting more than my system can deliver. I realize that the capture quality cannot really surpass the original, but what I'm getting now is nothing I would consider saving.

This is way off top topic, but is there a way to "capture" the digital video stream from satellite and use that instead of analog capture? Perhaps I'll post that somewhere else.

 

joeyjoey, my guess is you have your resolution
settings not correct set, because you should get a
decent capture, to start with..
maybe it helps, to install your capture software again, and check what the default settings are,
most of the time you don't have to change much of
these settings.

 

if you are trying to capture in .avi format I would use virtualvcr or vdub with the huppyuv codec. then import into another program as necessary. the captures are large but very clean.................oh, and these programs are free!

 

DVD bad (?) tracks ?
I have a 9G DVD w/ a movie I would like to copy.
Problem is: it gets to an area on the DVD and the ripping (I have tried several w/ same result) announces Cannot read ...I believe it says track or sector.
If I press "Retry" at times it will go past the sector but right after stops again .. but then retry will go nowhere and I force to abort the operation.
Now .. when I play the DVD in a standalone or dvd rom ALL IS FINE. I think the players can acomodate frame dropping and is no big deal, but rippers cannot NOT read a sector. Is there a way to tell a ripper to just forget about what you cannot read and keep going ? Or any other way to get around the problem ..
I Thank you for any reply
Pierino

 

I have come across a few dammaged DVD"s that have had this Problem and I solved the Problems a couple different ways ...I have a DVD Burner and a DVD-Rom drive and My DVD-Rom is a faster drive so I use it most often for ripping but it seems to pick up errors in the Disk a Lot more But my DVD Burner which only rips at 2X speed doesn"t read the errors, So if you have 2 DVD drives try useing the other Drive...And DVD Decryptor will give you the option to Retry or Ignore the error but if you Ignore the error there will be an error in the Ripped Vob File and Most often than not you will have more than one Bad sector on the Disk so you will have to deal with more than one Error...There are Programs for extracting files off of Dammaged DVD"s Like "DVD X Rescue" or "Bad Copy Pro" both of which will add Zero"s instead of copy the Bad sector so the File will not have any Corruption in it but will have a Glitch were the error is...well good Luck

 

I purchased a Sony VAIO RZ54G that seems fully equipped to copy the old home vidoes that I have. These are very old and originally were Super 8 movies that were converted to tape, so you can imagine the quality. 3 different types of software were included in my package for capturing video; DVgate Plus, Adobe Premier LE and Click to DVD. The latter seems to be the only one capable of capturing the VHS video using the red, white and yellow video cables. One has to make it look like they are recording live TV to get this capture. Although a lengthy process, I was able to capture, edit and cut a DVD of this tape that plays on the DVD connected to my TV.

On my attempt with my second VHS tape, in the middle of editing, I got an error message that the program had to close and lost everything. Someone informed me that Click to DVD might be unstable software as my 3.2 GHz P4 with 512 MB RAM and 200 GB HD was more than sufficient. They especially said this because the VHS tape capture ended up being in RealMedia format that I had to import into Click to DVD to then edit and burn the DVD.

After that long story, would you know if there is a better way to use what came with this PC system which has Windows XP Media? Being a novice, I may not realize everything but the other two software packages only captured using some kind of IEEE iLink cable which I think is more for camcorders.

I had everything else shut down while editing when this program crash occurred. Is my only recourse to get better software? I purchased this package as I thought it had everything I needed to accomplish this conversion of old VHS tapes to CDs as I was concerned with these older tapes becoming bad. Any advice?
Frank-in-CA

 

minion - when using virtualVCR with HuffyUV is there a best fps capture setting? Is 30fps too high?

gracias

 

If you are Captureing your Files are are going to put them on VCD/SVCD or DVD then you should capture at 29.976fps for NTSC and 25fps for Pal....Cheers