Recording VHS in and burning to DVD???

[rkoenn]

I have had a request from a friend to build a system for his wife for Xmas. One primary requirement is to be able to record VHS VCR input to the hard drive and then burn it to a DVD disc. Of course this will require a DVD burner but the other part is the video in. If I were to use something such as an ATI Radeon 7500 All-in-Wonder card could I input the VCR signal through the TV tuner part of the card and record the video to the hard drive? I believe this would be possible but am unsure as I have never attempted to do this before. All knowledgable responses to my question are gladly accepted. Thanks in advance.

 

[tart666]

AIW cards have Video In connections, so you can capture the video via low-frequency RCA cables. It will be much cleaner that way.

The bigger problem will be MPEG2 compression. Hopefully the DVD-authoring software that comes with the burner will take care of that, but sometimes it does not. You will have to research that.

Edit: here's a capture device with a built-in realtime MPEG2 encoder: Dazzle DVC150. This may be a decent solution for $199.

 

[orion7144]

Highly recommended to go with the Hardware MPEG2 encoder as tart666 said. Also you may want to have a look
here. This will show how to do it with freeware tools but you loos quality and time (takes longer) with software encoding.

 

[BeBumbleBe]

The Dazzle is a good solution for VHS conversion of exisitng tapes, but probably not for DV because it lacks a firewire port and its easier to edit a DV source than an mpeg2 source