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VHS to DVD
- Thread starter Zul
- Start date
If you wanted to do it with your PC. I would recommend the Hauppauge winTV go. I've had personal experience with it and it's great. I also have ATI's TV wonder which is a buggy POS and uses the same hardware tuner. ATI's drivers just aren't up to par with this card. See here for more on that. Once you have the analogue signal captured you can use a program like Ulead DVD studio to master your DVDs. There is a new Sony DVD burner which supports all the dvd standards. Highly recommended.
You may want to consider going from VHS to Video CD (VCD) format, especially if you already have a CD burner. Most standalone DVD players will play VCDs without a problem. There is really no need to go to the expense of buying a DVD burner and media, if this is the only use you will have.
You will need some way to plug your VCR output into the PC, both audio, and either composite video or S-Video connector. Many "All-In-Wonder"-type video cards have these inputs or you can buy a TV-card or dedicated capture card for pretty cheap. You can download free software to do the capture and subsequent encoding into the proper MPEG-1 format. Then you can just burn it to regular blank CDR media using your favorite burning application, and voila, you have your home VHS movies on your DVD player!
For more info on the whole process and where to get software, see www.vcdhelp.com.
You will need some way to plug your VCR output into the PC, both audio, and either composite video or S-Video connector. Many "All-In-Wonder"-type video cards have these inputs or you can buy a TV-card or dedicated capture card for pretty cheap. You can download free software to do the capture and subsequent encoding into the proper MPEG-1 format. Then you can just burn it to regular blank CDR media using your favorite burning application, and voila, you have your home VHS movies on your DVD player!
For more info on the whole process and where to get software, see www.vcdhelp.com.
in my opinion, VCD is crap. I really hate it. Even displayed on a TV you can see pixelation and the quality just isn't that good. I don't see why you would want to downgrade your videos from VHS to something that looks worse. DVD burners are coming down in price every week and the media is 2-3$ per disc. If they're home movies that you want to keep forever I wouldn't skimp on the quality.
My experience with the el-cheapo media is that it works OK for data (call it ~98%), and rarely works for playing on a regular DVD player (set-top).
The cheapest DVDr that I have found that consistantly works (call it 99%) on the regular DVD player is the Apple DVDR media, which is ~US$6.00 a disk (retail or close to it, maybe can be found cheaper).
I bought many varieties of cheap media, most just wouldn't play in the set-top ... but they worked OK for data backup / "directCD-kinda stuff.
VCD image quality is dependent on the quality of the CODEC you use to render the MPEG1. If you use a bad CODEC (or even a good CODEC with bad settings), it'll look bad. I've used Main Concept, Digigami, and Ligos (and Tsunami, and the ATI AIW) ... all have been acceptable to excellent, depending on the quality of the input media.
FWIW
Scott
The cheapest DVDr that I have found that consistantly works (call it 99%) on the regular DVD player is the Apple DVDR media, which is ~US$6.00 a disk (retail or close to it, maybe can be found cheaper).
I bought many varieties of cheap media, most just wouldn't play in the set-top ... but they worked OK for data backup / "directCD-kinda stuff.
VCD image quality is dependent on the quality of the CODEC you use to render the MPEG1. If you use a bad CODEC (or even a good CODEC with bad settings), it'll look bad. I've used Main Concept, Digigami, and Ligos (and Tsunami, and the ATI AIW) ... all have been acceptable to excellent, depending on the quality of the input media.
FWIW
Scott
VCD isn't inherently "crap". Theoretically, it is at least the same quality as the original source VHS. That said, there are many pitfalls when converting a VHS cassette to VCD that can cause the quality to drop. In any case, you can go to SVCD, which is certainly capable of producing a decent CD version of a VHS cassette, at the expense of shorter amounts of video per disk. Again, check out www.vcdhelp.com for more details and at least experiment with it to see if it will meet your needs. You really may not need to get that DVD burner at this point. I know that I am holding out until the standards get sorted out a little bit more. Although this is unlikely because of the entertainment industry's objections to such technology and the amount of clout they can exert on the hardware manufacturers.
Personally, I'd say skip the whole capture card scene. Some give very nice quality, some crap quality, all have drivers to update and many only last for one OS.
Or you can get away from all that and get a DV bridge. I was looking at capture card options, couldn't find anything that looked ideal. Found out about DV bridges and was sold. Sure, it's only going to DV codec (same as a DV cam) so you can't capture those 10mb/s raw AVIs. Just get DV, period. 3.x mb/s Capture 704x480x29.97 on a 400mhz machine if you want without ever worrying about dropping a frame. OS upgrade? No problem, no drivers to update.
Check out what the users over at VCDhelp say about it - then go look at other capture devices and see all the complaints. Link to ADVC-100 reviews. Sony makes some DV bridges too, but they're fairly hard to find. Dazzle makes some, they pretty much, well, aren't all that great. The Canopus ADVC-100 like I bought has locked audio (never worry about sync again), just hook it up to a firewire port and you're set for life. Also runs nice and cool, composits and S-video, haven't been able to make mine hiccup.
While I'd probably go SVCD at this point if you don't already have a burner I wouldn't go VCD. VCD is great for some things, but the quality isn't that impressive and the worse the source the worse the result. With DVD burners coming down that'd be the ideal way to go of course though. If you go SVCD it'll play on most DVD players (mine likes VCD and SVCD both, cheapo Apex) and look a hell of a lot better. But above comments are more to the point.
Just a thought.
Or you can get away from all that and get a DV bridge. I was looking at capture card options, couldn't find anything that looked ideal. Found out about DV bridges and was sold. Sure, it's only going to DV codec (same as a DV cam) so you can't capture those 10mb/s raw AVIs. Just get DV, period. 3.x mb/s Capture 704x480x29.97 on a 400mhz machine if you want without ever worrying about dropping a frame. OS upgrade? No problem, no drivers to update.
Check out what the users over at VCDhelp say about it - then go look at other capture devices and see all the complaints. Link to ADVC-100 reviews. Sony makes some DV bridges too, but they're fairly hard to find. Dazzle makes some, they pretty much, well, aren't all that great. The Canopus ADVC-100 like I bought has locked audio (never worry about sync again), just hook it up to a firewire port and you're set for life. Also runs nice and cool, composits and S-video, haven't been able to make mine hiccup.
While I'd probably go SVCD at this point if you don't already have a burner I wouldn't go VCD. VCD is great for some things, but the quality isn't that impressive and the worse the source the worse the result. With DVD burners coming down that'd be the ideal way to go of course though. If you go SVCD it'll play on most DVD players (mine likes VCD and SVCD both, cheapo Apex) and look a hell of a lot better. But above comments are more to the point.
Just a thought.
DV bridge are a good idea, that's true. The problem with that suggestion is that he would need a firewire port. If he doesn't have one that's an extra cost. You can get a TV capture card for $50 and that has the added benefit of having a TV tuner and somtimes radio tuner so you can watch/record tv radio on your PC. Instant replay is really cool and digital VCR saves having to hassel with VHS tapes to save your shows! TV capture is definitely the best bang for your buck solution. However, since I'm advocating expensive DVDs I'll admit that if you're wanting to get the best quality regardless of price (to a point-no pro cards) then a bridge is definitely a worthwhile solution.
Good luck.
Good luck.
I'd agree. I went through this whole process recently. I converted my 8mm home movies recently. I tried VCD and was very unhappy with the quality. I then tried SVCD using 2 pass VBR encoding. This produces a very good quality disc. You are limited in size. To get 1 Hr of good quality video on an 80 min CDR, you have to do 2 pass VBR and sacrifice some audio bitrate. There is also CVD which is like SVCD, but at a lower res. I haven't tried this yet, but it is supposed to have excellent results. Check out VCDHELP
Hulk
Diamond Member
Here's how I transfer my VHS tapes to digital:
1. Capture from high quality VCR, preferably one that has a digital frame buffer to reduce the amount of jitter on old tapes. Most SHVS decks have this feature, such as my JVC 5900. Use the best one you can get your hands on.
2. My capture card is a Matrox g450etv. I use avi_io as the program application, it allows seamless capture across the 4GB boundry many captures cards have, even with NTFS. Make sure you capture full screen resolution with PCM audio at 48,000 sampling rate so the rate won't change when compressing to MPEG layer DVD spec audio.
3. I use huffyuv as the capture codec. It is a LOSSLESS capture codec, kind of like compressed tiff but using moving images. Capture bitrates are usually around 10000. You'll need a fast system and a big hard drive. It's about 4GB for 11 or 12 minutes.
It's really important to get the best possible capture possible, that's why I stress a good VCR and the lossless codec. You want to give the MPEG-2 compression program the best source possible. Noise and other artifacts make it difficult for the MPEG-2 compression to be efficient.
Also, you do NOT want to compress from a format that is already compressed if at all possible. The DV Bridge is NOT a good option because the DV codec reduces the color space from 4:4:4 to 4:1:1 right off the bat. Not much there for the MPEG-2 codec to work with.
4. Edit the material to add any titles, cut out dead space, etc.. I personally use Ulead's MediaStudio Pro 6.5 but any good video editor will do.
5. Output in using the same lossless compression codec. I do not using the MPEG-2 encoder in MS Pro or any other video editor I have because I strongly believe that TMPGEnc is much superior to anything out there.
6. Compress using TMPGEnc. I use the constant quality mode set at 80 to 90 depending on the source material. I run a few quick tests to find the sweet spot.
7. Author to your DVD burner of choice. I would also save the video files on a disc. Someday there will be a standard and you'll want the raw MPEG-2 files.
Like I said, this is just how I find the results to be best. You may find a better way!
Good luck.
1. Capture from high quality VCR, preferably one that has a digital frame buffer to reduce the amount of jitter on old tapes. Most SHVS decks have this feature, such as my JVC 5900. Use the best one you can get your hands on.
2. My capture card is a Matrox g450etv. I use avi_io as the program application, it allows seamless capture across the 4GB boundry many captures cards have, even with NTFS. Make sure you capture full screen resolution with PCM audio at 48,000 sampling rate so the rate won't change when compressing to MPEG layer DVD spec audio.
3. I use huffyuv as the capture codec. It is a LOSSLESS capture codec, kind of like compressed tiff but using moving images. Capture bitrates are usually around 10000. You'll need a fast system and a big hard drive. It's about 4GB for 11 or 12 minutes.
It's really important to get the best possible capture possible, that's why I stress a good VCR and the lossless codec. You want to give the MPEG-2 compression program the best source possible. Noise and other artifacts make it difficult for the MPEG-2 compression to be efficient.
Also, you do NOT want to compress from a format that is already compressed if at all possible. The DV Bridge is NOT a good option because the DV codec reduces the color space from 4:4:4 to 4:1:1 right off the bat. Not much there for the MPEG-2 codec to work with.
4. Edit the material to add any titles, cut out dead space, etc.. I personally use Ulead's MediaStudio Pro 6.5 but any good video editor will do.
5. Output in using the same lossless compression codec. I do not using the MPEG-2 encoder in MS Pro or any other video editor I have because I strongly believe that TMPGEnc is much superior to anything out there.
6. Compress using TMPGEnc. I use the constant quality mode set at 80 to 90 depending on the source material. I run a few quick tests to find the sweet spot.
7. Author to your DVD burner of choice. I would also save the video files on a disc. Someday there will be a standard and you'll want the raw MPEG-2 files.
Like I said, this is just how I find the results to be best. You may find a better way!
Good luck.
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