VHS to DVD

[Noel]

Ok, my next venture into the 21st century.
Best, easiest, cheapest (well, free if possible) method to convert VHS tapes to DVD?

TIA

Noel

 

[Anonymous]

Web cam. Point at screen. record to WAV or other file. Play VHS tape. Record WAV to DVD.

(and I'm kidding...).

Andrew

 

[Noel]

That's great Andrew. So easy too, can't wait to see the results. Don't know why I didn't think of that before. Will let you know how I get on.

Many thanks

Noel

 

[Newbie_Neil]

Hi Noel

I have the Pinnacle studio Moviebox and once your film is in your pc you can edit it with the Pinnacle software. You then produce your DVD with DVD authoring software and compatible hardware.

IIRC, the Moviebox cost about 100GBP. I use it to load from the camcorder. It takes the standard white, orange and yellow leads.

It takes a little bit of learning, but it seems to do all that I want to do at this point in time. Pinnacle are one of the market leaders and have ever more expensive boxes and software to allow you to produce all of the bells and whistles.

Hope this helps.

Cheers
Neil

 

[cd]

Hi Noel

I've got one of these
http://www.pinnaclesys.com/ProductPage_ ... angue_ID=7
Its got the standard video inputs + an svideo input and works on usb (usb2 is best) It came bundled with some basic pinnacle editing software.
Should easily do what you want and IIRC was about £60 from PCWorld

cd

 

[Philly]

Noel
I bought a Pinnacle Rave tv card-from PC World for £20!!
Has all necessary inputs and doubles up as a tv tuner card. Now thats value!!!!
Cheers
Philly

 

[mahking51]

Hi all

Please be aware that if you try to digitise PAL VHS footage and then burn to DVD or Video CD you are likely to be very disappointed with the results as the VHS quality is not nearly good enough. This goes double or triple if the source VHS material is second or third generation itself.
I work with video all the time and the best results for the amateur are to use MiniDV as the source footage.
Fortunately MiniDV is now the prevalent format and yields fine results using the correct codecs and software.
I do accept that we all have VHS footage that is valuable to us and that burning to DVD is a good way of preserving an otherwise fragile source matterial - just don't expect too much
regards
martin
PS: i am not going to touch the copyright issue with a bargepole!

 

[thomaskennedy]

Why not just buy a DVD recorder (one for the TV) and hook it up via Scart lead to your video player and record that way?

This is by far the easiest and with sainsburys having a DVD recorder at £90 it is also quite cheap aswell :wink:

Hope this helps

Ta

Tom

 

[llangatwgnedd]

Tom,
I think your spot on there I got just two vhs tapes I would like to burn to dvd so why buy hardware that you would only would only use once so to speak unless it can do other things like tv in.
I think I will wait another Year or two so that the price comes down to dirt cheap

 

[mahking51]

Noely
Another way to do this is to play your VHS tape into a MiniDV Camcorder (borrowed?) then import the MiniDv footage via FireWire (1394 or iLink)into something like Nero on the PC and burn DVD from there. This is easy to do but bear in mind my comments re quailty above. This allows you the option of editing trimming any bits you don't need.
Regards
Martin

 

[mahking51]

Noely
Just a thought!
If you don't have reams and reams of footage I would be happy to drop the VHS to MiniDV for you as I have a dedicated conversion deck just for this type of stuff that I use for work. It is a realtime process so tell me how much you have if this appeals.
Regards
Martin

 

[gidon]

Noely,

I've done a lot of this. A few years back converting VHS to VCD's and more recently to DVD's.

To get good results with cheap hardware isn't easy but it is possible. As Philly says the cheapest way of doing it is to get one of those £20-40 TV cards. They have a raw capture mode. Use a compression format like PICVideo's MJPEG (good quality and small processor requirement - so fewer dropped frames). Or a lossless format like Huffyav. There's lots of free software to do this - and you'll get differing results with all of them - start off trying the basic capture utility that comes with the capture card - and come back if you have problems - this software is usually matched to your card. Try and use a decent operating system - Windows 2000 or XP. And try not to run anything else while you're doing the capturing. You need a fast system - and especially a fast hard drive for few frame drops.

As well as the compression format, you need to also choose the frame size you want to capture. This is tricky - because it does depend a lot on your system. And because you're capturing an analogue format - there's controversy on what resolution you need to capture at. Have a look at all the help sites (start with vcdhelp.com). But for VHS to DVD 352x576 I've found is the best setting. Of course as Martin has mentioned you won't get quality better than the original source, but I've still got some very good results where I couldn't tell the difference between the original and the DVD or VCD.

Once you've captured your VHS tape - with as few frame drops at possible you'll need to convert to MPEG-2 format to put on your DVD. I would use TMPGENCfor this (30 day trial). This is time consuming. Then you need to author the DVD. I would use TMPGENC DVD Authorfor this - by far the quickest and simplest DVD authoring package I've tried. It'll even write the DVD. And has simple editing features to chop out the adverts etc.

A slightly more expensive option is to upgrade your graphics card to an ATI All-In-One card - I have a ATI Radeon 9800. These cards have a combination MPEG2 hardware/software encoder built in so you can capture straight to this format and then just edit and burn to DVD. MUCH quicker. And the capturing utility works really well. I wish I'd had one of this cards earlier on! There are others but I'd read very good reviews of these ones - and they are good for gaming too if you're that way inclined .

Feel free to come back with more questions. It's fun to do - but don't expect instant results! A lot depends on how much you have to do. I wanted to get all my Seinfeld tapes to DVD (plus NYW). After spending ages slowly acheiving this - they are finally releasing them on DVD - typical! (Having said that I've bought the first two volumes and they are packed with extras ).

Have fun,

Gidon

 

[mahking51]

Gidon
I second most of your post.
I am surprised you got a good quality transfer from VHS to DVD, was it by any chance S-VHS? Also are you sure about the 352x576 resolution, sounds a bit odd.?
The whole thing can be a bit of a mine field for someone new to computer video or even someone who isn't. I had a lot of stressful times doing a sequence for a game called Quidditch on a film a couple of years ago! Took 129 people 6 days to do the first 6 seconds of a 6 minute event! Got faster after that though.
Very interested in the last bit of your post as I am just about to rip all my enhanced S-VHS NYW footage to full DV prior to making my own DVDs (for personaluse only!! :wink: ) but if the NYW is available on DVD already I won't bother.

 

[gidon]

Martin
No it wasn't S-VHS - but was SP recordings from satellite where I got the best results. But that's all pretty subjective - I find my wife is more critical of the final result than I am! Yep 352x576 is the recommended resolution to capture VHS - meant to be the minumum resolution to capture all the information (the 576=2x288 - because you capture both interlaced fields).
It is a bit of a waste converting to DVD format from VHS to be honest - you're better off converting to MPEG-1 VCD format and then burning those (much smaller) files to DVD (in my opinion). It still plays in a standard DVD player but you can fit loads more on a disc! Still that's confusing matters ...
It is a minefield alright! But lots of information on the web fortunately. Sounds like you're in the field then? Must be fun? Harry Potter no less!
Sorry - NYW isn't available on DVD - I was referring to Seinfeld (an American sitcom).
Cheers
Gidon

 

[Gill]

I don't understand the technicalities of this thread but I've got a Hauppage WinTV 2000 card in my pooter and I've connected both a VCR and a TV aerial to it. Whilst I'm sure that there must be some degradation of the picture, it hasn't been noticeable on any of the VHS to DVD conversions I've made. It also gives me a chance to watch my TV programmes when His Lordship wants to watch 'Star Trek' (again! :roll

Does anyone here use Pinnacle products? I've had a number of their cards and external devices over the years, all of which have let me down. I certainly find Hauppage preferable (I've no connection with either company).

Gill

 

[llangatwgnedd]

Does anyone here use Pinnacle products? I've had a number of their cards and external devices over the years, all of which have let me down

Yes Gilld.
I have/had the firewire capture card and version 7 software then upgraded to the current version 9.something and could not do any thing with it, computer always freezed but I always put it down to slow H/D and windows 98se trebled the size of ram and downloaded all the patches still u/s.

Pinnacles forum was like Record Powers forum i.e. Complaints Dept

 

[Newbie_Neil]

Hi Gill

I've got the Pinnacle MovieBox and, so far, it and the software have been excellent.

Cheers
Neil

 

[Steve Maskery]

I'm trying to put a lot of short (30min) VHS tapes onto DVD. Scart lead from VCR into Phillips R70 DVD. No problem.

Well, just a little one.

When we record from TV we can set the quality down to 6 hours on a disk, but using the direct record it seems to fixed at 2 hours. Does anyone know how to change this? As the 6-hour recording is already as good as VHS it seems daft gong any higher.

Thanks
Steve

 

[Woodythepecker]

Noel, did you convert your VHS tapes and if so what method did you use?

SWMBO wants me to do the same, but as i am a complete novice it will have to be something the brain dead could use.

If i did transfer the tapes using a VHS machine direct to a DVD recorder, could i then put the DVD disk in my computer and clean up any rubbish, such as removing unwanted parts and back ground noise?

Finally if i can transfer from VHS to a DVD recorder via my tv, would it be possible to do the same but from the VHS machine to the DVD rewriter in my pc?

Regards

Woody

 

[wizer]

If i did transfer the tapes using a VHS machine direct to a DVD recorder, could i then put the DVD disk in my computer and clean up any rubbish, such as removing unwanted parts and back ground noise?

Yes, you will need video editing software.

Finally if i can transfer from VHS to a DVD recorder via my tv, would it be possible to do the same but from the VHS machine to the DVD rewriter in my pc?

No, you need to run it through the PC.