VHS -> pc -> dvd

[pejsaboy]

Both my parents and in-laws have huge collections of VHS movies they've bought over the years. Since VCRs are an endangered species nowadays, I'd like to find a solution for moving their vhs tapes to dvd without buying one of the standalone units since between all of us, we have VCRs and computers with dvd burners. Is it something as simple as a usb cable and some software to get this happening?

[imposter]

Looking for the same thing for me and my friend ^_^

im guessing some sort of Tunner or input device would work? like Vivo from my x1900xtx?

i guess i know the hard ware aspect of what i need, i guess its more of an issue for the software. i am guessing we need something to record the data stream, then another one to convert it to DVD's. would also be nice to have them as movie files on my hdd as welll. (AVI or equivalent) any ideasS?

thanks imposter

[~(o)-(0)~]

Hi,
I used a pretty basic WinTv Go PCI tuner card and it comes with software that encodes to divx or a bunch of other formats. The card works just fine for SD content. I imagine its just one step further to get it burned to DVD, using nero Recode or something along those lines.

Nick

[Automiketic]

thats about it in a nut shell. a pci card and the software it comes with to decode. a cheap free program to burn to dvd is dvd flick. requires no codecs and burns it all onto playable dvds. should be pretty cheap. good luck!

[pejsaboy]

Is that a Hauppage card? I did some quick searching and only came up with Hauppage products.

[Neuromancer]

IF yoiu have Vista you do not need an App for burning to DVD. Just drag the Audio & Video_TS folders to a data disk. Although if using MovieMaker or something to convert to DVD, it may burn the DVDs for you.

(Some DVD players need the Audio_TS folder on there, even though it is not used for Video DVDs)

[Mpegger]

Try to get a card with a hardware based MPEG2 encoder. Most of the PCI cards from Hauppauge have this. Reason you would want one is because making a file that you would not have to transcode to a DVD complaint format is simple with a hardware encoder. The bad part is that the quality might suffer abit as compared to capturing video at maximum bitrate, then re-encoding (and cleaning up if need be) to a standard DVD compliant bitrate/format. Either way, a hardware encoder would be your best and easiest choice for the PC.

There are, however, VCR/DVDR all in ones as well. Just pop in the VHS tape, put in a blank DVD disc, and hit the record button. Down sides is limited options for quality and less control on the end result (skipping parts you dont want).

[pejsaboy]

Thanks for the replies everyone. Now that I've got a general starting point, I'll have to see if either set of parents want to spring for the hardware that I'll of course keep :D

[Old Thrashbarg]

It might not be what you're looking for, but I'll put in my 2c since I do a lot of tape->DVD transfers and such.

For the best and fastest results, you're actually better off not involving a computer in the process at all. My setup consists of a tape machine in whatever format necessary (for VHS I use an early '90s JVC pro/broadcast SVHS deck), run through a timebase corrector/video enhancer, direct to a standalone DVD recorder, or if I need to edit things together I've got extra decks and a switcher for that. Everything's connected together through S-Video.

Such a setup keeps everything in the path analog until the final step where the DVD recorder converts the analog input to DVD format... the advantage being that everything works in real time rather than waiting hours for a computer to encode it if you make any changes to the video. You can do color adjustments and whatnot on the fly. That also avoids any of the digital noise that tends to be introduced in computer captures on consumer-level equipment.

Now, you don't really need a rack full of pro equipment to get decent results (even I use a cheapy Presidian/Liteon DVD recorder), but the big one you'd want is the timebase corrector. It fixes the noise caused by tape stretch, which shows up as horizontal streaks and fuzziness in the picture, and most decent quality boxes also allow a certain measure of sharpness and contrast adjustment. Between that and an enhancer, you can get a good quality VHS source to look pretty close to DVD quality. But the killer feature of a TBC is the fact that, in compensating the timebase errors on the tape, it also happens to remove all traces of Macrovision, with no quality loss. That's a biggie if you're transferring any commercial tapes.

[pejsaboy]

Thanks for your input Thrash. Just out of curiosity, how much does a setup like you use run on average? Really though, I don't think either set of parents are going to care about the transfer quality enough to spend any serious cash on it.

[Old Thrashbarg]

Well, mine I inherited from my grandfather's old video production business, but a good pro-level VCR can be had for <$50 if you find a seller on eBay near you. (You prolly don't want to ship one, my JVC is ~60lbs.) A good full frame timebase corrector can be anywhere from $100 or more (the cheapy line-based TBC's are useless), depending how new and full-featured it is, mine's an older I-Den so it'd prolly be on the lower end of that scale. For a color correcotr/proc amp, they run the gamut, you can get a decent older one for well under $100, it'll prolly be composite video only, but it's not that big of a deal. As for a DVD recorder, I just use a Liteon/Presidian that I got on closeout at Radioshack for $40... you can usually find similar refurbed ones on Geeks.com in that price range.

If I were to recommend a single piece of equipment to you, just for a low-cost transferring operation, I'd say get a Sima SCC-series (http://cgi.ebay.com/SIMA-PRO-SERIES-COLOR-CORRECTOR-model-SCC_W0QQitemZ280299404682QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUS_Sof tware?hash=item280299404682&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1205%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C 240%3A1318%7C301%3A1%7C293%3A1%7C294%3A50) video corrector. They have the video enhancement features but they also include a rudimentary 'stabilizer' that helps with commercial tapes. The stabilizer doesn't work nearly as well as a full TBC, but for most purposes it'll produce satisfactory results, and certainly better than just running a VCR into a computer capture card.

[pejsaboy]

Thanks again for your input. I'll keep doing a little research and see what I come up with.

[Blackstar]

Thanks again for your input. I'll keep doing a little research and see what I come up with.

Also keep in mind, some of those VHS tapes may have analog Macrovision copy protection which will effect the recording, or perhaps even prevent it. You may get video contrast flicker on the dubbing so you may want to monitor it for some of the good purchase tapes.

Man, it's been a long time since I did some VHS dubbing, brings back memories. :)

There are some boxes you can get to filter it out, but I'm not sure if anyone even makes them anymore. But I would say Old Thrashbarg's suggestion of hardware only (no computer) is the best, real time solution for you.


- Blackstar