Converting VHS collection to VCDs!!!!

x86

Banned
Oct 12, 2001
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How does one convert VHS to VCDs? I know that a video in and audio in jacks are required, but what else? Has anybody tried capturing video from their VCR?

Thanks

-x86
 

mschell

Senior member
Oct 9, 1999
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One problem with putting the average 90 min VHS tape on VCD is unless you are in to overburning CDR's, you have to compress the allready average image quality of the VHS to fit on the 74 min CDR. Actually due to the VCD file overhead you get about 70 min record time, so don't expect to get VHS image quality from the VCD.
Other than that, you need a way to capture video. I've used many different capture devices but if you have a 1GHz+ system with at least a 40G HD most any TV tuner card will work fine. The software to manage the captured video is quite important as good software can take out the hassle of calculating compression bit rates and other things you would rather not have to know.
I currently use the InterVideo suite of products - Win DVD, Win Coder and Win Producer. Yea, they cost money but you can get them free with some capture cards, the MSI GeForce VIVO cards come with the software. If you don't have Win DVD then you will need a CD burning program that supports making VCD's. Nero 5.5 is one but you should get the plug in that automaticly encodes the video to the proper VCD format.
Oh yea, sound is commonly input to the "line in" jack on the sound card. - Good luck!
 

John P

Platinum Member
Oct 9, 1999
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I've tried making VCD's from film shot with my Canon ZR30 and have been very unhappy with the quality. SVCD's turn out much better, but you can only fit 35 minutes on one CD.
 

MadRat

Lifer
Oct 14, 1999
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I have an old Miro DC30+, which is now manufactured by Pinnacle. Sucks to see that they never got over the 4gb limit. Same damn limit that burdened us back in the day of 486's! I've always wondered about converting tapes to VCD...
 

AluminumStudios

Senior member
Sep 7, 2001
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You need a good quality capture card if you want to do a good job. ATI and the like include capture as an afterthought or extra feature. It is usually rather washed out and fuzzy compared to cards made by Pinnacle. So if you are really serious, a Pinnacle DV500 would be a great card for the job.

To get by the 2 or 4 gig limit you can capture with VirtualDub which is a freeware video capture/conversin utilitity. It has the ability to cut over to a new file when the current file you are capturing to reaches a specified size.

Once you have all of your video captured, you can line the separate files up one after another in video editing software and export to MPEG if it's supported, or open the first one then "append" the rest in VirtualDub and use it's frameserver feature to encode it in any stand-alone mpeg encoder like Tmpeg (which is really the best out right now).

Working with digital video gets complicated, this is just a very simple overview. I also have to agree that VCD is NOT a high quality format. SVCD is less supported by stand alone DVD players and with the fact that it only holds about 40 minutes of video makes it an unattractive option. These days many people are using DivX AVI files for digital copies of their stuff. It's quality and compression are great. My only concern is that it is a somewhat proprietary format (seeing that it is an AVI CODEC) and may not be playable 2 or 3 generations (windows versions and X86 CPUs) into the future unless development continues.

 

x86

Banned
Oct 12, 2001
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<< I've tried making VCD's from film shot with my Canon ZR30 and have been very unhappy with the quality. SVCD's turn out much better, but you can only fit 35 minutes on one CD. >>



How did you record? What was your setup? Programs?

-x86
 

John P

Platinum Member
Oct 9, 1999
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x86,

I am using Studio DV 1.2.6 to capture the video to DV-AVI. I burn the SVCD with Pinnacle Express that I picked up at CompUSA when they had it on sale for $19 (or was it $29, I forget) a few months ago. Studio DV does a crappy job of encoding to MPEG-2, so I let Pinnacle Express do the encoding/burning straight from the capured DV-AVI file. Pinnacle Express seems to have problems capturing the video straight from the camera, so that's why I used the DV-AVI captured with Studio DV.

I have messed with TMPGEnc also, but I have not noticed any quality improvements over the SVCD burned with Pinnacle Express doing the encoding.

Although the SVCD format is short, it's much higher quality than VHS and it is really cool to have the menus to pick what part of the video you want to watch. Plus Pinnacle Express let's you edit out the part of the video you don't want. You can even import custom picture backgrounds for you SVCD menu, so you can just capture a quick still with that feature on the ZR30MC, pop the MMC card in the computer and use that picture for the menu background and the CD cover.

I have also messed with ULEAD DVD Movie Factory free trial version, but the SVCD's I created with it would not play properly so I bagged it.