Anyone know about DVD recorders?

[ajf3]

Want to move my old home movies to DVD's... figured the easiest way would be with a DVD recorder.

...do the recorders vary in how well they encode from different sources? I'd like to get the best reproduction I can from my old tapes, but I'm wondering that maybe any off the shelf dvd recorder would do a similar job since the source tapes are all such lower resolution that DVD.

Anyone been down this road?

 

[CalvinHobbes]

See the link in my sig. They have a forum for DVD recorders.

 

[Quasmo]

If you want to do it right get a DVD recorder that takes firewire in. That way it's completely digital right from the source (Meaning you don't lose any quality in the cables) You might have to get a new player (might cost a bit) for your VHS tapes, but they're your home movies, how precious are they?

 

[ajf3]

Hey - thanks guys... just updating with how I went. I realized that the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150 I have actually has a hardware mpeg encoder in it... I bought it for the TV/radio tuner & didn't realize that it had the capture features initially.

Anyway, it seems to be working pretty well... I capture the stream with it, clip parts out using the editor that they provide (which doesn't re-encode), and then burn it to DVD using Ulead DVD MovieFactory. Seems to be working well...

...as for the firewire, that would probably be better, but none of my sources output digitial - everything does svideo though. I have VHS, 8mm and miniDV (older JVC model that doesn't output firewire).

Thanks!

 

[AnitaPeterson]

Here's my experience... I have a standalone Lite-On DVD recorder with FireWire, as well as the ADS InstantDVD 2.0 box (which is comparable with your Hauppauge capture card, except that it's an external solution).

The ADS is analog, using regular coaxial A/V cables; the Lite-On is fully digital, via FireWire... As I was looking for ways to back up my Digital8 tape collection, I started to wonder which of those two devices would be better... So I copied the same tape twice to DVD, using both methods, and here's what I found:

ADS - more control over bitrate, more control over colors and contrast. Excellent video results overall. The soundstage, however, seems a little congested (may also be a result of MPEG audio encoding)

Lite-On - better sound, from a spatial point of view (possibly because of Dolby Digital encoding). No color correction whatsoever - whatever the camera sees is what you end up with, on the disc. The serious video downside is that you don't have enough bitrate control, and the drop between 1-hour recording and 2-hour recording is quite significant, yet unavoidable for 90-minute tapes.

As you can see, there are advantages and disadvantages to both solutions. It's up to you to come up with a suitable compromise. I tend to favour the ADS, personally