best VHS to dvd or video file method

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yukichigai

Diamond Member
Apr 23, 2003
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Originally posted by: Slow Eddie
And now I have even worse news. If it takes up very little space, then its NOT true lossless. It has to be compressed somewhere along the way, hence the smaller file size than true uncompressed.
It doesn't take up minimal space, it takes as little space as possible given your processor speed. All HuffyUV does is run a few algorithms to find patterns in the data, then uses those patterns rather than raw bitcounts whenever possible. All pixel data is maintained.

Compressed != lossy. Does putting files into a .zip file destroy some of the data? No. Same idea here.

As far as DV tapes go... okay, I'd forgotten that technically it stores it in digital format. The problem is that it stores it in a non-isolated magnetic medium, which will still guarantee some quality loss. But yes, seeing as it's digital rather than analog, the quality loss will be very very small, probably undetectable. Still, given the size of DV video I'd much rather preffer using HuffyUV or max quality 1-pass XviD.

EDIT: The reason you haven't heard of HuffyUV before in the video industry is because 1) it was made with the idea of minimizing used HDD space, which professional studios don't really need to worry about most times, and 2) if I remember correctly it's covered under the GPL, and due to the "viral" clause nothing made from source video captured using HuffyUV can be sold for profit.
 

Tostada

Golden Member
Oct 9, 1999
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Slow Eddie:

Almost everything you have said is wrong. It's obvious that you have very little experience in this area (either that or you have a lot of experience doing things badly).

First, what makes you think a $1000 MiniDV cam has "cleaner inputs" than a $50 TV tuner card? Just because it's more expensive? Maybe that's a valid assumption, but it's just not relevant. The "cleanness of the inputs" is not something that makes any legitimate difference. Are you one of those guys who goes out and buys $50 gold-plated cables for everything when you'd be better off spending that money on real hardware that makes a difference?

He doesn't have an SVHS deck, so you're talking about capturing from a cheap VHS deck across RCA jacks into a DV cam. Those results simply aren't going to be better than capturing with almost any cheap capture card.

The ideal solution would be playing the tape on an SVHS deck with TBC and capturing it directly with a card with an S-Video input. This would be significantly better than using a DV cam for the capture simply because you're skipping the step where the camera encodes into the lossy DV format. Even if he doesn't get a good VCR, it's still stupid to use a DV cam because it's still adding the extra generational loss.

The best thing to get would be:

Canopus MPEG Pro MVR: $434
http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getp...asterid=904108&search=canopus+mpeg+mvr

JVC SR-V101US: $282
http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=4244971/search=SR-V101

The Canopus MPEG Pro MVR is a normal capture card that captures from analog S-Video straight to a DVD-compliant MPEG2 file and does excellent filtering and noise reduction. That's as good as it gets for this application, but something cheaper would be OK:

AVerMedia 1500: $75
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=15-100-008

If he's not going to get a new VCR, though, upgrading anything else is almost worthless.


Anyway, your arguments are absurd. First, you suggest that he use a $1000 DV cam, and then you say saving as uncompressed video is overkill. You are essentially admitting that your suggested method is inferior, yet you couldn't tell the difference so it doesn't matter. Why suggest it in the first place, then, when it's more of a hassle to use the DV cam?

Maybe if his computer is a real piece of crap and he just happens to have access to a good DV cam with inputs, your suggestion may be valid. A crappy system might drop frames capturing. The problem with that line of thinking is that if his computer sucks too badly to capture video well, it's probably not new enough to have firewire.

Originally posted by: Slow Eddie
I've been a professional in the video industry for 5 years and I have never heard of huffy, except for the bike I bought for my sister for her tenth birthday. That says it all right there regarding your miracle codec.

This really made me laugh. It's just hilarious how often this comes up on the net.

1. Person A makes some ridiculous claim.
2. Person B disproves Person A.
3. Person A claims to be a professional in the field and therefore Person B is just wrong.

When you say "professional in the video industry," do you mean that you've worked at Blockbuster for five years? Otherwise you should've been fired four years and 364 days ago.

This guy needs to go look over at the Doom9.org forums (or any of the pro video forums) before he gets more information from imbeciles.
 

Pariah

Elite Member
Apr 16, 2000
7,357
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Everything Eddie said wasn't wrong. Most of it was factually correct, though some of it didn't make a whole lot sense. Kind of hypocritical to insult the intelligence of a poster, when the opposing viewpoint displayed even worse knowledge of the subject. I'd much sooner listen to someone who didn't know what the huffyYUV codec (something which is not used much if any in the professional market) was before I would listen to someone who thought DV was an analog format. It's also incredibly ignorant to think that using a lossless codec renders the choice of capture device irrelevant. A $50 TV tuner card is not going to capture the same quality movie as a $50,000 Media 100 system simply because it is using the same codec with the same settings. The capture device is very important no matter what you are capturing and in what format.

Like Eddie, I would also recommend using DV as opposed to any other format. It's extremely easy to work with and has the best balance of file size to quality (which is exceptional depending on the hardware). It is widely use in the professional world, which makes it more than good enough for a VHS capture for a home user. I wouldn't go the DV camera route though, I didn't get that one, try getting something like this:

canopus ADVC55

It can't really get any easier than using one of these. Plug the source into the device and and connect it to your PC through firewire (you will need a firewire port in your PC), and let the device do all the work for you. You'll end up with a high quality DV compatible stream which you can do what you please with.
 

yukichigai

Diamond Member
Apr 23, 2003
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Originally posted by: Pariah
Like Eddie, I would also recommend using DV as opposed to any other format. It's extremely easy to work with and has the best balance of file size to quality (which is exceptional depending on the hardware).
Okay, now this is confusing the hell out of me, because what I've read of DV video indicates that the bitrate is fixed at 216Mb/sec, or roughly 20 minutes per DVD5. This may be lossless, and for recording on the fly from cameras that's perfectly fine. A good thing in fact. But given that it by no means has "the best balance of file size to quality." HuffyUV is lossless, and my VHS captures using the format have never been anywhere near 216Mb/sec. Then again, I'm not intimately familiar with DV. The equipment costs money I don't have, and I don't do enough camera work to justify the cost.

Given what the OP has, I still say HuffyUV + a generic capture card will work fine, at least for a VHS capture. I don't buy the assertion that the higher the price of the card, the better the quality of the capture. That is true to a limited extent, but for a VHS capture once you get to a card that has S-Video input nothing beyond that in price will matter. Don't believe everything Pinnacle and Adobe tell you.
 

Tostada

Golden Member
Oct 9, 1999
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Originally posted by: Pariah
I'd much sooner listen to someone who didn't know what the huffyYUV codec (something which is not used much if any in the professional market) was before I would listen to someone who thought DV was an analog format.

That's lovely. You've gone and taken the least stupid thing Slow Eddie said and compared it to the most stupid thing yukichigai said, and you have concluded that Slow Eddie is smarter simply because "I've never heard of HuffyUV" is more reasonable than saying "DV is analog." Nevermind the fact that yukichigai accepted that he was wrong about that and actually demonstrated the ability to learn something.

Come on. Get a grip.

If you're going to be such an ass in an online forum, you're going to have to learn to argue better. I'll try and give you some tips.

Your argument here is called Poisoning the Well. It's a fallacy where you find one questionable thing that a person said and conclude that everything that person ever says is therefore wrong.


It's also incredibly ignorant to think that using a lossless codec renders the choice of capture device irrelevant.

I guess that would be ignorant. Did someone say that? I didn't.

Your argument here is called the Straw Man. It's a common fallacy where you misrepresent someone's position then attack your distortion of their position.

The capture device is certainly near the bottom of the list of important components in this particular case, though, and there's a good chance that a cheap capture card using a lossless codec will give better results than an expensive DV cam that simply can't avoid generational loss. Sure, if the capture card was really terrible it could screw things up.


A $50 TV tuner card is not going to capture the same quality movie as a $50,000 Media 100 system simply because it is using the same codec with the same settings.

Nobody claimed it would.

This is another Straw Man. You made up something else that nobody said and then pointed out that it was ridiculous.


The capture device is very important no matter what you are capturing and in what format.

Not really, unless you're talking about a complete POS capture card. If you're letting the computer do all the work, you don't need a card that does its own filtering or does hardware MPEG. You just need something that can get a clean capture. There are some really cheap cards that can do an excellent job when that's all you need.

Sure, an expensive capture device would be nice, but it is absolutely nowhere near as imporant as having a good source. In this case, the VCR is the weak link. A good SVHS deck with TBC will make a huge difference. Without upgrading the VCR, you don't just have noise to worry about. You actually have analog time-base problems that you're not going to be able to fix (well, some really expensive Canopus cards will try, but it's no substitute for having a good SVHS deck). Those rainbows and jitters are going to screw up your video a lot more than having a cheap capture card.

At least it looks like you're done with the personal attacks.


Like Eddie, I would also recommend using DV as opposed to any other format. It's extremely easy to work with and has the best balance of file size to quality (which is exceptional depending on the hardware). It is widely use in the professional world, which makes it more than good enough for a VHS capture for a home user. I wouldn't go the DV camera route though, I didn't get that one, try getting something like this:

canopus ADVC55

It can't really get any easier than using one of these. Plug the source into the device and and connect it to your PC through firewire (you will need a firewire port in your PC), and let the device do all the work for you. You'll end up with a high quality DV compatible stream which you can do what you please with.

He wants to make DVDs, and you're suggesting he capture DV then convert it to MPEG2. It's just not the ideal route to take. It looks like you want to pretend the guy who started this thread is a complete moron who is not capable of capturing video without a box that gives him DV. If he wants a simple solution, he should get a card that captures directly to MPEG2. It doesn't take a genius to understand that capturing to MPEG2 would be much more simple than capturing to DV then converting to MPEG2. At least your suggestion of the ADVC avoids having to stop the VCR to change tapes in the middle like you would have to if you were using a DV cam.

If you're most concerned about quality, you should avoid DV because it adds generational loss.

If you're most concerned about simplicity, you should avoid DV because it adds the extra step of converting the DV.

Regardless, my main point is that none of that is nearly as important as the VCR he uses, and the fact that you're totally ignoring my main point and attacking all the small details is pretty suspicious.

Have you ever tried capturing VHS tapes? Have you captured old VHS tapes? Have you seen the difference between capturing VHS tapes with a regular VCR and capturing VHS tapes with an SVHS deck with TBC? I've compared all of them. I've spent weeks on a single tape seeing what gave the best results.

I've actually used a good DV cam to capture old VHS material that was really bad. I used the DV cam because it was a really high-end Sony that did a very good job, and the tape I was capturing had so much noise that the Athlon XP 1600 I had at the time couldn't capture it without dropping frames. The results were great. They were great because a professional JVC deck was plugged into the DV cam. That's the important part.

And... umm... what exactly crawled up your ass and died that is causing you to troll every thread I post to lately?
 

Tostada

Golden Member
Oct 9, 1999
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Originally posted by: yukichigai
Okay, now this is confusing the hell out of me, because what I've read of DV video indicates that the bitrate is fixed at 216Mb/sec, or roughly 20 minutes per DVD5. This may be lossless, and for recording on the fly from cameras that's perfectly fine. A good thing in fact. But given that it by no means has "the best balance of file size to quality."

Yeah, DV is 13GB per hour, 720x480 interlaced. Even though it's a huge bitrate, it's not lossless. It's usually not noticable as long as it's being encoded by something that isn't too cheap, but DV also has a different colorspace than DVD MPEG2. DV is 4:1:1 and DVD is 4:2:0. The colorspace conversion is at least as big a loss as the compression itself.

4:1:1 colorspace keeps chroma data for the every 4th pixel on every line. 4:2:0 colorspace keeps chroma data for every other pixel on every odd line. So, DV has a really low horizontal chroma resolution but full vertical chroma resolution. DVD has half resolution in both directions. When you convert between them, you get the worst of both worlds. You essentially get a 720x480 frame that only has 160x240 color information. A lot of times on digital cable I see stuff that has obviously gone through too many color conversions. The red looks really terrible. Once you start looking for it, you can't help noticing the huge color blocks.

One interesting thing about VHS is that it screws up the chroma information with every generation of a dub. A regular VHS tape will have the chroma information offset by 2-4 pixels vertically, and every time you dub the tape it gets compounded (although I suppose you can do it whenever you want since the offset should always be a multiple of 2).
 

Pariah

Elite Member
Apr 16, 2000
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Okay, now this is confusing the hell out of me, because what I've read of DV video indicates that the bitrate is fixed at 216Mb/sec, or roughly 20 minutes per DVD5. This may be lossless, and for recording on the fly from cameras that's perfectly fine. A good thing in fact. But given that it by no means has "the best balance of file size to quality." HuffyUV is lossless, and my VHS captures using the format have never been anywhere near 216Mb/sec. Then again, I'm not intimately familiar with DV. The equipment costs money I don't have, and I don't do enough camera work to justify the cost.

DV is a fixed 3.6MB/s or 28.8Mb/s, not 216Mb/s. That's roughly 1/3 to 1/4 the size of a same resolution huffyUV file which is a considerable space savings when dealing with high bitrates like these. If capturing the full Star Wars trilogy, DV will require about 82GB's, while huffy will be somewhere between 250GB and 325GB. A savings of 170-250 GB's is certainly nothing to scoff at. A 66-75% reduction in required storage space for a video that will look virtually indistinguishable from the uncompressed version especially when dealing with a low quality source like VHS makes DV the better balanced codec to be using in all but very rare cases.

DV cameras aren't cheap, but you don't need a DV camera to use DV. The product I linked above is $195 which isn't too expensive. It's also brain dead easy to use. Because it is DV, it requires no drivers or software to be installed if you are using Windows XP. The external box handles the analog to digital conversion, all you have to do is use the XP bundled windows movie maker (or software of your choice) to transfer the movie to your hard drive through a firewire port on your computer. Since the movie is digitized before it reaches the computer, the software you use to get it on your computer is irrelevant since all it is doing is copying a digital file which is what DV does.

Read any reviews on the web about the ADVC55 or it's big brother the AVDC110, which has the same conversion quality but has bi-directional conversion (analog->digital and digital->analog) capabilities instead of the unidirectional ability of the ADVC55, and see if you can find any that don't rave about the simplicity of use and video quality of the products.

I don't buy the assertion that the higher the price of the card, the better the quality of the capture.

Of course not, I don't either. But generally speaking the more you spend, the better the capture quality, the better the feature set, and the better the bundled software. If you don't think a Matrox RT product produces a better result than a $50 Avermedia TV tuner you are blind.

That is true to a limited extent, but for a VHS capture once you get to a card that has S-Video input nothing beyond that in price will matter.

That's where you are wrong, and why you are underestimating the importance of the capture card. The most important step in the conversion process is the actual process of encoding the analog video into digital, this is where capture cards differentiate each other. Just because 2 cards use S-Video in, doesn't mean they feed the same analog source for conversion or that they process the digitization the same way.
 

Slow Eddie

Junior Member
May 24, 2005
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Holy crap this is funny! Yeah, you got me there, I've worked at blockbuster the last 5 years. How did you find me out?

I'm not going to argue with you any more, its pretty pointless since you obviously know more than me. All I know is that after I'm done typing this reply I'm going to begin editing a series of 17 interviews for one client, call another regarding a promotional video I'm producing, and compress 30 DV files for streaming over the internet..... what will you be doing besides suggesting proprietary codecs and $50 tv tuner cards? Play video games?

Man, I feel so lucky that I have people that actually pay me to work in a field I know nothing about.

Eddie

 

Tostada

Golden Member
Oct 9, 1999
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Originally posted by: Pariah
DV is a fixed 3.6MB/s or 28.8Mb/s, not 216Mb/s. That's roughly 1/3 to 1/4 the size of a same resolution huffyUV file which is a considerable space savings when dealing with high bitrates like these. If capturing the full Star Wars trilogy, DV will require about 82GB's, while huffy will be somewhere between 250GB and 325GB. A savings of 170-250 GB's is certainly nothing to scoff at.

So now you're assuming that he's going to capture the whole trilogy and put it on a single DVD? If not, why are you assuming that he needs to keep all three on his hard drive at the same time?

I don't remember Huffy ever taking that much space anyway. He should need well under 100GB to do one movie at a time.

If space really is an issue, using DV isn't going to reduce the quality that much. It's just not ideal, and it's certainly not worth going out and buying new hardware just to add the DV step.

That $195 box you're suggesting also can't clean up VHS like the $600 model, and everybody should know that it's a bad idea to do a recompression before you use any cleanup filters, since that adds to the noise. The only thing it has going for it is simplicity, and it's not as simple as capturing to MPEG2.

The method you suggest would definitely be inferior to just downloading the LaserDisc rips (although quasi-ethical, I suppose, even though he does own that version on different media).

The method you suggest would definitely be inferior to using the $75 capture card mentioned above and capturing to MPEG2. It would be lower quality than capturing to a lossless format with a $75 card. So why exactly do you keep suggesting it?

 

Tostada

Golden Member
Oct 9, 1999
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Originally posted by: Slow Eddie
Holy crap this is funny! Yeah, you got me there, I've worked at blockbuster the last 5 years. How did you find me out?

I'm not going to argue with you any more, its pretty pointless since you obviously know more than me. All I know is that after I'm done typing this reply I'm going to begin editing a series of 17 interviews for one client, call another regarding a promotional video I'm producing, and compress 30 DV files for streaming over the internet..... what will you be doing besides suggesting proprietary codecs and $50 tv tuner cards? Play video games?

Man, I feel so lucky that I have people that actually pay me to work in a field I know nothing about.

Eddie


You must be a busy guy if you have to call a client at midnight!

Maybe you actually are a professional. In that case, it's very unfortunate that you think DV is the answer to everything just because you use DV at work. It's not the best solution. It's not the easiest solution. It's not the highest quality. It's not the cheapest.
 

Slow Eddie

Junior Member
May 24, 2005
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Originally posted by: Tostada
Originally posted by: Slow Eddie
Holy crap this is funny! Yeah, you got me there, I've worked at blockbuster the last 5 years. How did you find me out?

I'm not going to argue with you any more, its pretty pointless since you obviously know more than me. All I know is that after I'm done typing this reply I'm going to begin editing a series of 17 interviews for one client, call another regarding a promotional video I'm producing, and compress 30 DV files for streaming over the internet..... what will you be doing besides suggesting proprietary codecs and $50 tv tuner cards? Play video games?

Man, I feel so lucky that I have people that actually pay me to work in a field I know nothing about.

Eddie


You must be a busy guy if you have to call a client at midnight!

Maybe you actually are a professional. In that case, it's very unfortunate that you think DV is the answer to everything just because you use DV at work. It's not the best solution. It's not the easiest solution. It's not the highest quality. It's not the cheapest.


Cali time my friend.

Another reason to not use huffy is compatibility with NLE programs. What happens if you drop a huffy encoded file onto the Premiere timeline? Or Vegas? Or Avid? I'm sure its not supported, you'll just get a big fat error.

Eddie
 

Tostada

Golden Member
Oct 9, 1999
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Originally posted by: Slow Eddie
Another reason to not use huffy is compatibility with NLE programs. What happens if you drop a huffy encoded file onto the Premiere timeline? Or Vegas? Or Avid? I'm sure its not supported, you'll just get a big fat error.

Eddie

Absolutely. If he wanted to do much NLE, he should use DV. Most of the good packages pretty much assume you're working in DV. If he just wants to transfer the VHS to DVD, though, it's an unnecessary step.

That said, you won't get a "big fat error" just trying to drop a Huffy file into Vegas/Premiere/etc. Huffy is a valid AVI codec like anything else. If you can play it in Media Player, it should work in any of those packages (and I've certainly done plenty work in Vegas 4 & 5 with Huffy and MPEG2 files, not just DV).
 

Slow Eddie

Junior Member
May 24, 2005
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Originally posted by: Tostada
Originally posted by: Slow Eddie
Another reason to not use huffy is compatibility with NLE programs. What happens if you drop a huffy encoded file onto the Premiere timeline? Or Vegas? Or Avid? I'm sure its not supported, you'll just get a big fat error.

Eddie

Absolutely. If he wanted to do much NLE, he should use DV. Most of the good packages pretty much assume you're working in DV. If he just wants to transfer the VHS to DVD, though, it's an unnecessary step.

That said, you won't get a "big fat error" just trying to drop a Huffy file into Vegas/Premiere/etc. Huffy is a valid AVI codec like anything else. If you can play it in Media Player, it should work in any of those packages (and I've certainly done plenty work in Vegas 4 & 5 with Huffy and MPEG2 files, not just DV).

I still don't understand why you keep saying converting to DV is an "unneccessary step". Whether you convert to huffy or DV the work flow is still the same. The first step is capturing from VHS to your hard drive, encoding via either huffy or DV. Then you need to encode to mpeg2 for DVD. Unless you're saying that the tv tuner card can capture directly into DVD compliant MPEG2 files that will import easily into a popular DVD authoring program for encoding. If thats the case, then I would need to see that for myself, since I've been doing this long enough to know that as soon as you introduce proprietary codecs you're opening yourself up to a world of headaches in the event that you want to do some sort of file manipulation in another application, not only the one that created the file.

Honestly I just don't see DVD Architect or the likes of any other DVD Authoring program importing a huffy file with out any sort of issues. You would have to encode via another program first, and that would be your extra step, and then you would still have to hope that this new file could comingle happily with your authoring program, and that your proprietary codec doesn't cause any skipping or jumping artifacts once dumped onto DVD.

DV, even at its compressed state, will still yield a great quality master, while at the same time providing a versatile format for use in virtually every application developed for computer based NLE editing or content creation. DV is the lowest common denominator, and it just makes more sense.

If all you are truly doing is trying to get from VHS to DVD, then a $200 stand alone pioneer DVD recorder would do the trick without all this worrying about codecs and compliancy.

Eddie
 

ShadowBlade

Diamond Member
Feb 11, 2005
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well theres no way i can get a $1000 DV camcorder for this
i suppose my personal expectations/limitations would be that they playback at 800x600 or better and all 3 movies will fit on the 40GB left on my hard drive and that i dont have to spend more than like $300 for things except the TV tuner (b/c i need one of those anyway)
 

Tostada

Golden Member
Oct 9, 1999
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Originally posted by: Slow Eddie
Unless you're saying that the tv tuner card can capture directly into DVD compliant MPEG2 files that will import easily into a popular DVD authoring program for encoding.
Both those cards can capture into DVD-compliant MPEG2. That's pretty much what they're designed to do.

Honestly I just don't see DVD Architect or the likes of any other DVD Authoring program importing a huffy file with out any sort of issues. You would have to encode via another program first, and that would be your extra step, and then you would still have to hope that this new file could comingle happily with your authoring program, and that your proprietary codec doesn't cause any skipping or jumping artifacts once dumped onto DVD.

Any programs that can import AVIs will have no problem with Huffy. At the very least it'll work as a valid DirectShow source.

Anyway... it looks like you actually are an intelligent guy. Imagine that! I can understand you thinking "WTF? Why do it in a non-standard way when everybody uses DV." At the very least, colorspace conversion is a bit of a concern, though.


I hope we can at least agree that, when talking about capturing VHS, the most important thing by far is getting a good source, and that can really only be done with a SVHS deck with TBC. Anything else will look worse, or at the very least (in the case of the really good Canopus cards that try to do TBC for you), it's not optimal because it's trying to reconstruct the picture after the fact.

I'd say just get the JVC deck and then get whatever he thinks will be the most useful later on, whether that's a capture card or a DV box.
 

Tostada

Golden Member
Oct 9, 1999
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Originally posted by: ShadowBlade
well theres no way i can get a $1000 DV camcorder for this
i suppose my personal expectations/limitations would be that they playback at 800x600 or better and all 3 movies will fit on the 40GB left on my hard drive and that i dont have to spend more than like $300 for things except the TV tuner (b/c i need one of those anyway)

Whoa.

If you get that $282 JVC deck, you can get it into your computer just about any way you want. Do whatever you think is convenient. It'll look about as good as it can possibly get.

If you're actually trying to fit all three of the movies into 40GB, though, the only way you're going to manage that is to capture directly into MPEG2. The $75 AVerMedia does hardware MPEG2 and will give you good quality. That's really the cheapest thing that would be reasonable. Then you can just use something extremely simple like TMPGEnc DVD Author and drop the MPEG2 files directly in. Set some chapter points and burn.

If you're going to go the DV route, get the ADVC box. You will also need firewire on your computer. Do you have that? If you capture DV, each movie will take up about 30GB. You'll have to do one at a time. You'll just capture a big 30GB DV file, then use some package like Vegas to turn it into MPEG2, which will have its own authoring package to burn.


 

ShadowBlade

Diamond Member
Feb 11, 2005
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ok then....
i googled TMPGEnc DVD Author and couldnt find a download site...anyone have a link to a trial download?
 

Slow Eddie

Junior Member
May 24, 2005
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Originally posted by: Tostada
Originally posted by: Slow Eddie
Unless you're saying that the tv tuner card can capture directly into DVD compliant MPEG2 files that will import easily into a popular DVD authoring program for encoding.
Both those cards can capture into DVD-compliant MPEG2. That's pretty much what they're designed to do.

Honestly I just don't see DVD Architect or the likes of any other DVD Authoring program importing a huffy file with out any sort of issues. You would have to encode via another program first, and that would be your extra step, and then you would still have to hope that this new file could comingle happily with your authoring program, and that your proprietary codec doesn't cause any skipping or jumping artifacts once dumped onto DVD.

Any programs that can import AVIs will have no problem with Huffy. At the very least it'll work as a valid DirectShow source.

Anyway... it looks like you actually are an intelligent guy. Imagine that! I can understand you thinking "WTF? Why do it in a non-standard way when everybody uses DV." At the very least, colorspace conversion is a bit of a concern, though.


I hope we can at least agree that, when talking about capturing VHS, the most important thing by far is getting a good source, and that can really only be done with a SVHS deck with TBC. Anything else will look worse, or at the very least (in the case of the really good Canopus cards that try to do TBC for you), it's not optimal because it's trying to reconstruct the picture after the fact.

I'd say just get the JVC deck and then get whatever he thinks will be the most useful later on, whether that's a capture card or a DV box.

I've owned a few jvc dvs2u decks and actually encountered a few situations where the TBC needed to be turned off to facilitate proper VHS playback. Ah well. I'm glad we could finally argue intelligently abut it, although I think I owe you a few insults.

I think any way you slice it, capturing a 2 hour movie to disk nd then authoring a dvd is going to be a mission. Block out a solid weekend.

I say just buy a DVD recorder for $200 and be done with it, especially if you think this is going to be doing this on a semi regular basis. The only issue there is menu creation.

Eddie

 

tiap

Senior member
Mar 22, 2001
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Originally posted by: ShadowBlade
ok then....
i googled TMPGEnc DVD Author and couldnt find a download site...anyone have a link to a trial download?

Here is the site.

Vhs quality is poor, no matter what player you use.
In this day and age why would anyone want to buy a vhs player of any type unless it was for home movies.
The original trilogy is available on sale at times in dvd and with free software you can edit and record your own backups to your taste.

Look at these options for affordable capture/convert devices.
 

ShadowBlade

Diamond Member
Feb 11, 2005
4,263
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Originally posted by: tiap
Originally posted by: ShadowBlade
ok then....
i googled TMPGEnc DVD Author and couldnt find a download site...anyone have a link to a trial download?

Here is the site.

Vhs quality is poor, no matter what player you use.
In this day and age why would anyone want to buy a vhs player of any type unless it was for home movies.
The original trilogy is available on sale at times in dvd and with free software you can edit and record your own backups to your taste.

Look at these options for affordable capture/convert devices.

thanks for the link