PCA Forums

Can somebody give me a few tips on what I need to convert VHS tapes to DVD. I want to back up my tapes before they all get destroyed by my dear litle kids.
What kind of hardware do I need, what software works good?
Hardware i got is a P4 2.4 prescott, 1 GiG RAM, 150 gig HDD, Raedon 9200, running WIN XP Pro

mpeg vcr for use after you get it hdd to edit it(ugly cuts or just running to get in the scene)
dvd-lab for making menus/vobs out of the *.mpg's. (these are pay apps so $$$ or looking in the right spot to finid a fully working demo)

I heard you can also turn avi,divx,mpeg all straight to dvd but they only play on start dont remember that app.

Ask Nexus_7 about the starwars clonewars dvd I made from cartoon network using those two apps.

is the copy protection some tapes have a problem? or does the software filter it out?

Originally posted by Shadow250
is the copy protection some tapes have a problem? or does the software filter it out?

No way to filter it out. It would have to be removed. I've never found anything that was a way around this. GL

I need to know some basics here, like video capture cards, should a guy buy something external or internal, they come in prices from 40$ all the way up to few hundred, are any you of you guys using a specific brand that you could reccomend?
I was looking at something cheap like this
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/ ... u=A46-4006

I tried this about 2 years ago, and gave up because of the quality of the conversion, and the loss of frames while trying to process the conversion. I used a TV tuner card, but my mistake I made was getting a USB model. USB is not what you want to use for the conversion, as you will loose frames.

You can check out this site for more info:
http://www.videohelp.com/

thanks for your help guys. Will see what the local stores have for capture cards.

If anybody has a guide, step by step tutorial, would you be willing to e-mail it to me? Couldnt find one by googling for it, they all want money first, and I'm not going to pay 20 bucks and then find out I could have gotten the same info somewhere else for free.

http://www.digitalfaq.com/capture/atimpeg/atimpeg.htm


this page has to do with capture/convert with ATI AIW cards. on the menu at the left there is a lot of stuff there to do with analog-digital conversions and video restoration as well as recommendations for hardware/software.

i find the guides to be useful, however the author is biased towards ATI AIW cards with the rage theater chip and high end SVHS players. I use them too and I guess you could say I am biased also. I never had any problems with quality.

I've tried various ways too and usually had poor results. Much was not knowing what I was doing and not bothering to read through pages and pages of instructions.

But with this:
http://www.pegasys-inc.com/en/product/tda.html

With a decent tv tuner, it is very easy using tmpeg DVD authoring. Anyone can figure that out. It guides you through it as you go. You record the program first to mpeg or dv files with your tuner or whatever, then you open up tmpeg.

Most tv tuners use software decoding so it takes cpu power. Some cards have built in hardware mpeg decoding like the win tv pvr 350. They also have a 250 version that is good too. But those two are not cheap.


I still use the 5-6 year old win tv theatre because it still does me well, and has 5.1 dolby surround sound. The sound REALLY helps if you use 4 or more speakers. The included software isn't that good for watching or recording, so I use <a href="http://www.intervideo.com/jsp/WinDVR_Pr ... >windvr</a> for watching and recording.

You can get the cards I mentioned cheaper at newegg. Even the lower end

Leadtek does well from what all I've heard. It's 10 bit, my old card is 8 bit. That just means better tv quality on your monitor. It, as all the others, has hookups for rca plugs, svideo, etc..

ATI, Asus and others make good cards too. Haven't heard much good on avermedia.

Well gee this is a late post on the subject I geuss,

I capture with my ATI AIW 7500 Radeon card directly to Mpeg with the correct settings for DVD, use Tmpgenc DVD Author to cut, mix, add, clips or whatever, make menus, author the DVD to the harddrive. I then watch it in Power DVD to make sure it turned out as I wanted, then use the built in burner in Tmpcgenc DVD author to burn the actual disk. This is when I am in a hurry and want something fast. For other stuff I do more difficult harder to explain things.

The above gets me the same VHS quality onto the DVD as it was on the Tape! No lost frames, no problems. Just a VHS movie in DVD format

As for the copy protections, no problem with any tapes here. Pay a few bucks (about $100) for a video clarifier (Video Facet? ) or buy a time base corrector for alot more that does other things also. I have a couple things now. I was doing alot of work for awhile making DVDs from low quality tapes and bought things to improve the quality, was also nice I removed the macrovision from my tapes so I could back them up also

Well gotto run, time to take kid to school.