VHS to DVD Hardware Question

[Carbo]

There have been a few threads recently about transferring old VHS tapes to DVD. I was one of the unwashed, uninformed, and unknowing. Thanks to some helpful members here, and some due diligence on my part, today I'm a little less blind about this stuff.
Anyway, I was reading this"how to" article in PC World, and they mentioned the AVerMedia DVD EZMaker USB2.0, calling it their Best Buy. Before I drop $50 on it, I'm wondering if anyone has first hand experience with it? My needs are simple, by the way. Very little to no editing planned. Just want to get some tapes onto discs. Thank you.

 

[Peter]

We had all this covered in other threads ... essentially, if you want best capture quality, you need internal PCI not USB.

 

[cubby1223]

If you want them to look good, you need hardware mpeg encoding. Check out Hauppauge PVR cards for reference. http://www.hauppauge.com

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: cubby1223
If you want them to look good, you need hardware mpeg encoding. Check out Hauppauge PVR cards for reference. http://www.hauppauge.com

Actually, good software encoding (with the right codecs/filters, and good capture hardware) can give higher quality results than hardware encoding (because you can do uncompressed captures and then encode from that). But hardware cards use way less CPU time and are generally easier to deal with, and the output quality (assuming you are going to compress it to MPEG2 at some point) is not all that different.

 

[Carbo]

Originally posted by: Peter
We had all this covered in other threads ... essentially, if you want best capture quality, you need internal PCI not USB.

OK. And your recommendation is the FlyTV Platinum, based on another thread I read recently. Correct?

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: Peter
We had all this covered in other threads ... essentially, if you want best capture quality, you need internal PCI not USB.

Why internal PCI? Won't that get more electromagnetic interference? I can say that my USB TV tuner looks a hell of a lot better than my PCI one on the same chip.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: xtknight

Originally posted by: Peter
We had all this covered in other threads ... essentially, if you want best capture quality, you need internal PCI not USB.

Why internal PCI? Won't that get more electromagnetic interference? I can say that my USB TV tuner looks a hell of a lot better than my PCI one on the same chip.

The tuner on the PCI board is pretty heavily shielded, and your (grounded) case basically acts like a Faraday cage. You're more likely to get noise on an external tuner, although I will admit I was not an EE major.

There's no intrinsic reason why an external tuner should have worse capture quality than an internal tuner (once the captures are digitized, they are sent to the computer as binary data) -- historically, though, external devices have tended to suck. And USB1.0 devices can't handle high-quality video. But a good-quality USB2.0 tuner can be just as good as an internal one. It's all up to what capture hardware they use.

 

[uOpt]

Well, the load on the PCI bus from a non-compressing TV tuner card is also substancial.

Personally I am fed up with the cheap PCI cards, too often high-quality sound doesn't work with the tuner, my NForce 250 GB board sometimes really dislikes the PCI card etc.

A USB mpeg2-encoding card looks more and more attractive to me. Also, I can move it between my computers on the fly.

 

[uOpt]

Originally posted by: cubby1223
If you want them to look good, you need hardware mpeg encoding. Check out Hauppauge PVR cards for reference. http://www.hauppauge.com

This is not true as such, only if you do one-pass compression.

if you capture with a passive card and let the main CPU compress to Motion JPEG first (no cross-frame compression hence few quality loss) or even capture uncompressed (with a 200 GB drive that's not at all unrealistic) and then let the computer munch over it asynchronously all night you get better quality than the mpeg2 out of the card.

Also, you might not want mpeg2 in the end. If you want DivX you are better off doring uncompressed or motion JPEG first and then DivX. Doring mpeg2 first (hardware or software doesn't matter) and then re-encoding to DivX will have much heavier losses from the compression.

 

[Peter]

Poor signal quality from internal cards often is from poor motherboard design or weak power supplies, introducing ripple and noise into the supply voltage. Then if the TV card itself happens to have poor power decoupling as well, you'll get noise.
The FlyTV Platinum is very good in that regard - the older FlyVideo98 I had in there before was noticeably worse.

Raw capture through PCI at full resolution and color depth, and postprocessing to whatever format and quality you choose, is the way to go if you're after best recording quality. Mainboards with PCI throughput issues of course throw a wrench in that procedure ... but mainboards without such issues aren't hard to get either. I'm running a $50 Elitegroup mainboard w/ SiS chipset here ...

 

[AnitaPeterson]

Originally posted by: Matthias99

Originally posted by: cubby1223
If you want them to look good, you need hardware mpeg encoding. Check out Hauppauge PVR cards for reference. http://www.hauppauge.com

Actually, good software encoding (with the right codecs/filters, and good capture hardware) can give higher quality results than hardware encoding (because you can do uncompressed captures and then encode from that). But hardware cards use way less CPU time and are generally easier to deal with, and the output quality (assuming you are going to compress it to MPEG2 at some point) is not all that different.

I beg to differ... I've compared an uncompressed .avi (captured from my DV cam via FireWire) and encoded with Canopus Procoder into MPEG2 at 5 Mbps, VBR, highest quality, multiple passes with the end-result of an "on the fly" capture with ADS USB Instant DVD 2.0, at 4.5 Mbps VBR, and much to my suprise, the output of the ADS was better, sharper and clearer, while the Canopus (a professional software!) produced slightly blurrier results....

Also, the AVerMedia DVD EZMaker USB2.0 seems to be a simple USB interface, which leaves all the encoding to your machine, as opposed to actually having hardware encoding ... this means, you'll only get as good aan image as your CPU/HD/RAM can produce, not to mention the compression algorythm. Honestly, *I *wouldn't buy it.

 

[cubby1223]

I'm not saying the Hauppauge cards are the kings of the world, as they do leave something to be desired. But at the sub $150 price point & files ready to be tossed straight into an authoring program, you just can't beat them.

 

[uOpt]

Originally posted by: AnitaPeterson

Originally posted by: Matthias99

Originally posted by: cubby1223
If you want them to look good, you need hardware mpeg encoding. Check out Hauppauge PVR cards for reference. http://www.hauppauge.com

Actually, good software encoding (with the right codecs/filters, and good capture hardware) can give higher quality results than hardware encoding (because you can do uncompressed captures and then encode from that). But hardware cards use way less CPU time and are generally easier to deal with, and the output quality (assuming you are going to compress it to MPEG2 at some point) is not all that different.

I beg to differ... I've compared an uncompressed .avi (captured from my DV cam via FireWire) and encoded with Canopus Procoder into MPEG2 at 5 Mbps, VBR, highest quality, multiple passes with the end-result of an "on the fly" capture with ADS USB Instant DVD 2.0, at 4.5 Mbps VBR, and much to my suprise, the output of the ADS was better, sharper and clearer, while the Canopus (a professional software!) produced slightly blurrier results....

Also, the AVerMedia DVD EZMaker USB2.0 seems to be a simple USB interface, which leaves all the encoding to your machine, as opposed to actually having hardware encoding ... this means, you'll only get as good aan image as your CPU/HD/RAM can produce, not to mention the compression algorythm. Honestly, *I *wouldn't buy it.

Well, software is software. A hardware encoder can only produce higher qualiuty mpeg if it has a better algorithm in the encoding software. Obviously a software solution can use the better algorithm, too. Modulo hardware issues that ruin the quality of the PCI card with signal interference or power issues.

It is not possible to put uncompressed full-frame NTSC or PAL though USB-2.0. The USB solution must have some kind of compression (maybe a temporary one like I use motion jpeg at first).

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: Matthias99

Originally posted by: xtknight

Originally posted by: Peter
We had all this covered in other threads ... essentially, if you want best capture quality, you need internal PCI not USB.

Why internal PCI? Won't that get more electromagnetic interference? I can say that my USB TV tuner looks a hell of a lot better than my PCI one on the same chip.

The tuner on the PCI board is pretty heavily shielded, and your (grounded) case basically acts like a Faraday cage. You're more likely to get noise on an external tuner, although I will admit I was not an EE major.

There's no intrinsic reason why an external tuner should have worse capture quality than an internal tuner (once the captures are digitized, they are sent to the computer as binary data) -- historically, though, external devices have tended to suck. And USB1.0 devices can't handle high-quality video. But a good-quality USB2.0 tuner can be just as good as an internal one. It's all up to what capture hardware they use.

yeah I agree. most USB devices suck, but this TV tuner is pretty good.

 

[Matthias99]

It is not possible to put uncompressed full-frame NTSC or PAL though USB-2.0. The USB solution must have some kind of compression (maybe a temporary one like I use motion jpeg at first).

640*480 (num of pixels) * 24 (bpp) * 30 (fps) ~= 220Mbps. USB2.0 ~= 500Mbps. Where's the bandwidth problem?

Edit: Plus, I forgot to take into account that it's interlaced; it's really only about ~110Mbps for uncompressed SD video if it transmits interlaced fields to the system (I'm not sure if most external tuners also deinterlace).

 

[PhaZe]

What would be the EASIEST way to get vhs on to DVD? I have about 11 vhs tapes my mom wants me to do, and I seriously doubt she will whine about poor image quality, she just wants to sure she doesn't lose the videos. If I had the time I would also like to sit down and try to get the best picture possible, but working part time and going to school full time, I'm just looking for the easiest route.

Anyone have any recommendations? Thanks

we would let walgreens do it but they want 29.99 per tape

 

[yukichigai]

A vidcap card, VirtualDubMod, and TMPGEnc. (demo version works) I'd walk you through it, but at the moment I gotta go to work.

 

[Diogenes2]

Originally posted by: PhaZe
What would be the EASIEST way to get vhs on to DVD? I have about 11 vhs tapes my mom wants me to do, and I seriously doubt she will whine about poor image quality, she just wants to sure she doesn't lose the videos. If I had the time I would also like to sit down and try to get the best picture possible, but working part time and going to school full time, I'm just looking for the easiest route.

Anyone have any recommendations? Thanks

we would let walgreens do it but they want 29.99 per tape

I have something similar to this.. ( an older Leadtek card that is no longer available )

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications...em-details.asp?EdpNo=448345&CatId=1425


I suspect it will do a decent job of what you want to accomplish..

 

[PhaZe]

the problem that I run into is that I have to let the vhs tape play at normal pace right? So capturing a 2 hour movie and converting it to dvd would take 2 hours(capturing) + time it takes to convert(if needed) and burn , right?

 

[Diogenes2]

Originally posted by: PhaZe
the problem that I run into is that I have to let the vhs tape play at normal pace right? So capturing a 2 hour movie and converting it to dvd would take 2 hours(capturing) + time it takes to convert(if needed) and burn , right?

Are you talking about VHS movies a'la " Gone With The Wind " as opposed to ' home videos ' ?


There is no simple, fast ( cheap ) way to put a 2 hour VHS to DVD .. ( IMO )


P.S.

Here is a lot of info about what to expect regarding VHS - DVD

http://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=254624


Take a good look at about the 8th post down by ' vhelp ' ...

$29.99 At Walgreens, might start looking like a pretty good deal..

 

[PhaZe]

hehe nah dude, they are all family videos, but man I don't have the time. I'm barely at the house, it's like I only sleep and shower here. I'm either at school or work.

thanks for the link.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: PhaZe
hehe nah dude, they are all family videos, but man I don't have the time. I'm barely at the house, it's like I only sleep and shower here. I'm either at school or work.

thanks for the link.

Stand alone combos are the easiest way.They range in price and features so look around for a hot deal.

 

[PhaZe]

jackpot

thanks dapunisher