Hello all I am a relative newbie at this and have just about given up. I have both VHS tapes and tapes from my Hi-8 analogue camcorder I am trying to put on to DVD. I have 2 x PC's both running XP - a PIII [1000] and an Athlon 2600. After alot of research I settled on a Leadtek Expert 2000 card. It came with its own software [WinFast]. Hooked it up all correctly on my PIII, connected my camcorder and let it rip [with nothing else running, defragged etc etc] . Converting to a dedicated HD. Poor thing almost had a coronary! It created a file but on playback it looked like a Buster Keaton flick! So I decided my PC was not up to scratch. I removed the card and installed it into the Athlon with 80Gb HD. . Everything I've read led me to believe this was OK. Same procedure - defrag etc]. Same result though a slight improvement. Maybe it's the software so I tried ULead Movie Maker, ULead Studio 8 - Studio 8 was slightly better. I burned a DVD but the resultant quality is maybe 40% of the Hi-8 which is pretty good. I have thought about buying a standalone DVD Recorder to try that and a friend is soon getting a Panasonic Digicam wth analogue-in. Should I try these options - are they better? Or is it user error? I want to do some serious editing [they are non-commercial tapes] and have about 60Gb to play around with on the Athlon. But from what I already have, it is not incremental improvement I am looking for but a quantum leap so to speak! The DVD I made is crap. Like watching a video on a 25 yo VCR which ha snever had its heads cleaned. Lots of frame dropout I suspect, though I am NOT an expert. I have read lots of the posts here but still don't know where I am going wrong. I thought my old PIII would deliver acceptable results but it the engines canno" stand the strain! All help GRATEFULLY accepted. Is all I read really fiction and I really have to go to a commercial operation who charge $$6 Quadzillion a tape?
I also first used a Leadtek Winfast 2k Expert card when starting out to do a VHS project. On my P4 1.6 GHz machine with 1.5 GB RAM, I had the same problems you have mentioned. That card is software encoding card and needs a pretty hot machine to support the throughput. I tried about every setting but I just didn't have the system needed. The Leadtek does make a nice looking capture though, under the right circumstances. You don't have much hard drive space to work with, but you could capture to AVI (less CPU intensive) and re-encode to mpeg2 after the capture. Here's what I did and wish I had of done so from the beginning. I now use Hauppauge PVR-150 Retail to do my VHS captures, check http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/compare_pvr.html page for the specs. You may need different inputs than I do. I just use the composite a/v from my VCR. The PVR line of cards are hardware encoding (both audio and video btw) on the card, so your system resources are not as critical to success, and picture and sound stays in sync. Other models might serve you better. I am now very happy with the results using the same system as mentioned above. I am capturing at DVD compliant specs (for me NTSC 29.97 fps, 720x480 Full D1, with mpeg2-layer 1 audio). I'm sure others here have favorite cards or alternatives to suggest. I just didn't want to waste a lot of time and the Hauppauge card was on sale for $60.00. Some resources, www.tv-cards.com and www.shspvr.com may shed more light for you. I'll look for more links and check back on you.
Thanks LivnDGirl I should have mentioned that I also tried most settings on the Leadtek software and also with the ULead. I ended up capturing to avi beacuse I needed to edit it and I read that was the way to go. You mentioned you can get nice results with the Leadtek under the right circumstances. What do you mean by that - is there anything else I might try before tossing it and buying a hardware encoder? Also, do you know whether using a digicam or standalone DVD recorder with encoder and firewire out might be easier? Thanks again.
Hi maroon, I am using the same card, Leadtek Winfast tv2000xp expert, with Conexant CX2388x chip,on a P4 Celeron 2gb with 512mb ram, and finally getting excellent quality,close to indistinguishable from watching original VHS Tape. I am capturing with Ulead MediaStudio Pro 7(I love the large preview screen)available as a fully functionable trial for 30 days.I set it to record at DVD Pal 720x576, variable bit rate, 6000kbps, mpeg audio,output frame type 'frame-based'.I have tried all the other programs,& with my low-end system, this gives noticeably better results, with no dropped frames or synch. problems & nice sharpness contrast & colour saturation. I author with TMPGenc DVD Author 1.6 Adding sound & video cards instead of using 'on board', helped. Haupauge PVR-150 will be my next card, but the Leadtek is doing ok.
