Convert VHS tapes to DVD?

lukin

I have recorded some VHS tapes to my hard drive using this capture card and ULead’s DVD MovieFactory.
No problem there but the quality of what I have recorded is terrible.
At first I put it down to my lack of processing power and RAM (I have a 1 GHz Celeron and 245 MB of RAM) but I have been told that the card is not good enough.
I am considering buying this instead but I want to make sure it doesn’t turn out to be another waste of money.
I believe I need a digital input instead of analogue and that is why the quality is so bad.
I know of a website that converts VHS tapes to DVD but they charge £32 sterling per hour of tape!
Should I buy the new card or is my system not powerful enough anyway?
Cheers.

gs39t

I'm doing the VERY same thing with my WinTV PVR 350 (it costs i think E220 at elara) and im VERY happy with the results

Its true what they say though, good quality tapes = good quality DVD; bad quality tapes = terrible quality DVD

This card has cable with scart > digital input, so its straight from scart to the card. I was using the same ULead software too, but i found it terrible and im using TMPEGenc now.

I would say honestly if you want good quality, it will cost you. I'm recording at 12mbit /sec and its almost impossible to tell if im watching a pro-recorded DVD or one i made from a VHS tape.

Its not a cheap card, but it was WELL worth the price IMO.

BTW, im running it on a 1.4 GHz XP, 512mb RAM, win2k pro, BUT, the card has both a hardware decoder AND encoder built into it, and when recording it often only uses a TINY amount of CPU resources and about 1/4 the total RAM

Ive been there, done that -so any Q's just ask me

lukin

Interesting.
I'm in two minds about whether to buy that now or the one I was originally going to get!
Sounds like I'll have enough RAM and processing power whichever one I buy though, which is a relief.
I looked up the one you bought on Hauppauge's site, it seems pretty good.
Only one of the tapes I plan to convert is REALLY old (recorded in 1990), the rest are fairly recent, so I know what you mean about

Its true what they say though, good quality tapes = good quality DVD; bad quality tapes = terrible quality DVD

I am just a bit peed off that I have to splash out again for something I thought I already had.
From where did you buy that WinTV PVR by the way?

gs39t

Got mine from Elara

Its NOT easy to use at all, but thats good -because there are so many settings for capturing etc that you can get it the way you want.

I highly recommend it. 3 Hours DVD standard play = 10 GB, be warned!

Anything you wanna know about it before you make a decision to buy, ask me.

lukin

Well, I've got a 120 GB HD with one partition of 30 GB completley empty.
I've loads of space in the other partitions too so I should be O.K.
As for all the settings, I've had loads of practise with them on the capture card I have a the moment so I know a bit about frames per second, resolution, codecs etc.
Is this the one you bought?
If so, it looks like a better option than the one on amazon that I was looking at first.

gs39t

This is the one - the WinTV PVR 350. As far as i know, the only difference between the 250 and the 350 is an FM tuner (which ive never used). Might be some other, but i think they are basically the same.

I have a 60 GB partition which i use solely for video editing purposes, and thats usually full. Unless your encoding in VCD or SVCD, of course, but i want best quality so i always use 12 mbit DVD standard.

IF your going to get that card, throw away the CD that comes with it and download the latest drivers. The WinTV2000 version that came on the CD crashed every time i changed the channel, and the version i downloaded is MUCH more stable.

A couple of things you might wanna know about the card:

Changing the channels is slow, about 3-4 seconds, then a few seconds of audio and video blips, then it settles down. Not a serious issue, but gets annoying if your trying to 'channel surf'

Also, the card itself does get extremely hot - you would actually burn your fingers on it, so make sure you have adequate cooling in your case. Havent heard of problems with it burning out, but the heat thing is well known.

When i installed mine, the graphics card stopped working. I thought it somehow had fried it, but after about an hour of panic and pulling out and re-installing all the PCI cards, it all went relativly smoothly.

lukin

€230?I knew that other one for €155 was too good to be true!
Still, if it does the job it'll be well worth it.
I just have another few questions:
Will it work with any video recorder? (mine is a fairly new one but I stil want to be sure)
Do I need any other equipment?
245 MB is definetley enough RAM (it doesn't specify how much on Hauppauges' site)
Thanks.

gs39t

I'm using a Philips VR 210, its about a year old. As far as i can tell, once the VCR has a SCART cable connector you can hook it up. This one works fine for me.

The cable that comes with it works fine, and its a SCART one end, S-video/composite video cable. SCART end to VCR, s-video to card.

I had run it on 128mb of RAM before upgrading the 512, and noticed no difference except speed of encoding in Ulead DVD Moviefactory SE(which, again, seems crap as it kept crashing on me, hence why i no longer use it)

Other equipment? Between the card and the VCR - thats all you need, well, except a DVD burner obviously

The card has a host of output features too, but i havent even touched on that yet. I'm primarily archiving old VHS tapes.

Ill (try!) attach a screen from the DVD quality recording just to give you an idea of the quality.

gs39t

Cant attach a screen, i think the file size is too big. If you want to give me your email address i could send it to you.

lukin

Thanks, that'd be great.
I'll pm my e-mail address to you.

gs39t

I sent it to you.

You might want to take a look here for specific things about the 250 & 350 cards, and here which has reviews and a great forum , how to's , guides etc etc..

lukin

Cheers, thanks

daveg

I too have been trying to capture video to my PC (8mm camcorder via ATI all in wonder 9000). Basically the best software to capture with is Virtual Dub. You need to apply a codec to compress your capture and give you good quality. You then need to "frameserve" to TPMGenc to convert to an Mpeg2 ready for burning to DVD.

DVDRHelp.com is your best friend and has lots of tutorials/best settings ect ect. The capture section is located here


Another "trick" is to capture your anolog source (VCR) via a digital comcoder to your capture card. More info in the "How to capture Analog Video using a Digital Camcorder" section of the link above.

Hope this helps.

lukin

I don't have a camcorder so I won't be able to do that.
I'll probably end up buying the one from elara as I don't trust that USB one.
Thanks for the replies.

sci0x

You could also try using the HP DVD Movie Writer DC3000 to burn DVD copies of videotapes.