Hello folks and thanks for any help you might offer. I’ve been ripping and burning DVD’s for a couple of years and have accumulated an arsenal of weapons which never let me down, even with little surprises like “Little Black Book” and “Resident Evil”. Now what seems pretty basic, VHS to DVD conversion, has got me stumped. I have nearly 300 deteriorating commercial VHS that I’d like to preserve to DVD. I have no problem with the capture, and am pleased with the quality of the resulting MPEG2 files. The next step of converting to vob, ifo, and bup in a video_ts folder is what’s creating the gray(er) hair. I’ve used Roxio (came with the Plextor burner), and Power Director (came with the capture card). Both offer to let me write to the HD, where I could then use Shrink and CopytoDVD, but the Power Director insists on taking the 11+ GB of MPEG2 files from Saving Private Ryan (for example) and compressing to 4.3 GB for a DVD, even though I’m writing to a fast and nearly empty 200 GB drive. The Roxio grinds away to probably about the 9 GB mark, and then GoBack shuts down the system. I’ve looked through many strings throughout this site, but have yet to find any answers that work for this situation. Is there a step by step recommendation and/or recommended utils to successfully accomplish this?? Thanks!!
Power Director thinks you're making a DVD5, thus it's re-encoding. A dual layer DVD9 is Roxio's limit, thus it craps out. What you need to do, is: a) Capture at a lower bitrate, or b) Cut the mpeg into workable portions, or c) Author in something that will go beyond the 9 gig limit, then use DVDShrink to fit to size. Personally, I would go with "b", then author multiple disks.
Thanks for the tips RebootJim. I'll try a 50/50 split in Roxio for this monster and see if that will make it to the HD. I think shrink has the ability to combine or prepare together 2 movies for one burn. Is that correct, and if so, would that be an reasonable option to spliting the movie across multiple DVD's?? I'm sure quality may also become an issue in that too. I have several VHS oldies that are that long or longer, and some 2 tape movies that aren't really that long, and could perhaps be combined to one DVD. I'm learning and looking for good advise. Thanks much for your's!!
That worked perfectly.... used winrar to open iso's then combined in shrink. Burned with copy2dvd. The results are very good to have been such a hugh file coming from an old and well used VHS. Thanks again for the tips!! Is there a good util out there that does not have the dvd5 or dvd9 cap for use when copying directly to hard drive?? DGuy360
I use DVDLab Pro. It will simply give a brief warning if you go over the 9 gig limit for a DL, but allow you to compile anyhow. Once compiled, DVDShrink can shrink it. If it's STILL not small enough, just run it through DVDShrink a second time. Personally, VHS quality isn't great to begin with, so I usually capture mpeg-2 at no more than 4000kbps. This makes the files easier to work with.
