Posted: 2/8/2004 8:59:51 AM EDT
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I am rolling. Having installed my 200 gig hard drive and DVD burner, I am staring at my VCR tape collection and determining these simply must be converted to DVD. Soooooo. Anyone in the vast knowledge universe that is ARFCOM know the best way to go about this. I have seen prices on the internet from $50-5000? WTFO? |
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The best I've seen has been the Canous ADVC-100 which is an external converter that takes in analog video and audio and converts it to DV for input into a 1394 (firewire) port. The problem with all-in-one cards are manifest. The board [url]www.dvdrhelp.com[/url] is full of them. The ADVC-100 was the top rated device for the year or so I followed them before buying one. I have not dropped on single frame of video while doing a caputure. The ADVC-100 also has the ability to convert the DV out of your computer back to analog for recording on a VHS tape if you so wish. I record mine to VCD or DVD. Understand that you'll have to use a few programs if you want the best. I use Scene Analyser Live for caputure, TMPGEnc for transcoding from DV to DVD, Premier for editing and special effects, Nero Burning ROM for authoring, and Surething for my label making. |
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You'll need a full resolution capture card, something that will capture 720 x 468. I use a Mac with a Matrox RTMAC analog capture card, it is only a 200$ card. For PC, you could try a Matrox RT 10X ($700) or a lower end card like ADS or Pinnacle ($200-300). Check out: http://www.video-editing.com/capture-devices.html |
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If you have a huge video tape collection that you want to convert, you might want to buy one of the stand alone DVD burners. Tha way you just plug your VCR into that and hit the play and record buttons. When the tape is done you'll have a DVD copy. With the computer you will have to capture the video to your hard drive first, then go through the setup to create the DVD files, then burn it to the DVD. It will take at least twice if not 3 times as long. At least with the setup that I have it does. I have the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-250 card for my capture card. That creates an MPEG 2 video file, which I then have to convert into DVD files, and then burn. |
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Quoted: Quoted: You'll need a full resolution capture card, something that will capture 720 x 468. Wrong. D1 Broadcast Video is 720x[b]486[/b]. DV capture cards, as well as the dvd spec. use 720x480. The Canous ADVC-100, as paul stated, is a good choice. Christ sakes, it was a typo. I do video for a living, sheesh. BTW, I want to capture DVD and burn to DVD. Is there a way to extract the MPEG2 from the Video_TS file? Or will I get the same quality if I capture straight from a DVD then setup my files in DVD Studio Pro? There'll be no Genloss like with analog but how should I setup when I capture? Capture and save the file as MPEG2 or full .MOV? |
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Quoted: BTW, I want to capture DVD and burn to DVD. Is there a way to extract the MPEG2 from the Video_TS file? Or will I get the same quality if I capture straight from a DVD then setup my files in DVD Studio Pro? There'll be no Genloss like with analog but how should I setup when I capture? Capture and save the file as MPEG2 or full .MOV? I recommend you search for a program called DVD Shrink. It's free and will capture video off of DVD, shrink it if necessary, and create the Video_TS files you needs for burning. |
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I'll second the recommendation for a Canopus ADVC-100. DV gives you decent video quality, but the most important feature by far is the locked audio. With most cheap capture cards the audio sampling rate is not locked to the video frame rate, so the audio track will drift out of sync over a long clip. Yes, it is possible to "reverse-engineer" a DVD and recover MPEG-2 streams that you can re-assemble losslessly into another DVD. For original material you will capture to DV using the ADVC-100 and then compress to MPEG-2. Try several different MPEG-2 encoders because they all have different flaws. On the Mac, Compressor is adequate but BitVice is better, and on the PC I recommend TMPGEnc or the encoder that comes with Vegas. Another option is to capture directly to MPEG-2 using a PCI card or a USB device. I don't have any experience with this, but it might be easier if you don't anticipate doing any editing. If you happen to have access to a real professional MPEG-2 hardware encoder, take that above any software encoder. |