I was looking into doing something special for my wife for our first year annaversary! And that would be taking our wedding tape and putting it on DVD so we can play it in our DVD Player, make a nice menu and all that stuff. Well I did my research and figured out my player will play DVD-RWs and thats great I use nero and now for the interesting part! HOW do you take a VHS Tape and put it on your computer? I was looking at the dazzle thing at bestbuy, but is there a better solution? Maybe a TV Capture card and play the tape on TV and have it captured to the computer? As always I'm confused! Can someone shed some light on this situation for me?

Regards,
~PCTech


PS HD Space is not an issue. Would I be better doing this some other way?

The most inexpensive solution is to buy a TV card ;)

I use an Ati tv tuner for doing what you want to do :lol:

do you have a personal recomendation on to which card I should use? Thanks for your suggestion! I'm all for inexpensive! :)

Thanks,
~PCTech

I have an ATI tv card and I like it ;)

This is an ATI tv wonder

Hi PCTech,

What is your computer configuration? To capture video you got two options:

• Capture in raw AVI format -- this needs a fast computer since you are going to perform a Software based Video Compression.
• Caputre directly to MPEG2 format -- you don't always need a fast computer since the Hardware encoder does it all for you.

My suggestion is for you to go with a Hardware Encoder, yes it that option is more expensive than the first option. But it will save you time.
The fastest computers nowadays still need hours to compress 1-hour video data.

Allthough this shop is in Australia, you will have an idea about the prices and what types of hardware is used in this field.

Canopus Let?s EDIT RT -- 456.806 USD
Pinnacle Studio 8 Deluxe -- 453.758 USD
Or else, you can use a TV Card like Bads said, and import the video in AVI format and use your favourite DVD Burning Software to burn your DVD Compilation.
(some newer TV Cards support hardware compression).


All the best,
McoreD

Oops forgot this one:

I own a Dazzle* Digital Video Creator USB for my old PII. All it can do is AVI to MPEG1. It is no longer avaliable in the market.

The newer products are really impressive:
Dazzle* Digital Video Creator 150
But now I don't use any of these. My P4 is fast enough to real time encode uncompressed Camcorder video to WMV9 via Movie Maker. I am getting near-DVD Quality. So no more extra costs for me.

It your choice after all, :)
McoreD

Two solutions:

Buy a video capture card. My capture card happens to be an ATI All In Wonder TV card, like Bad says. It has analog input for vcr input. Bascially two inputs: Videdo and audio.

The other solution is buy a USB video interface. Less work, maybe cheaper, same result.

Then use any capture software. Go hightest quality because VHS coming in through a composit connection ain't the best. Burn and you got it.

What would give me good quality as far as viewing it after its captured on the computer? I was really looking to go with a dazzle solution, but I was also really considering a TV Card (ie the all in wonder varity). The best capture card i've seen does 300 x 200 something like that, which aint good by my standards. plus I want my wife to see high quality! dazzle or tv capture card? I'm puzzled as to which would give highest quality! I've got some video software that came with my DVD Burner and btw, my computer setup is below:

1900XP+ 1GB DDR400 390GB HD Space, GeForce2MX200

HOpe that helps,
Regards,
~PCTech

You will need to capture video at 720 * 576 Resolution in order to get DVD Quality -- and your system should be capable of doing it *if* you don't use a Hardware Encoder.

Your system will do Real-time 720 * 576 Capturing using Windows Movie Maker 2 (Software Encoding) however that's WMV9 -- not MPEG2.

Hardware Encoders can real-time capture:
Can you please link us to a All-In-Wonder TC Card you are thinking of buying? (I had no luck googling for it).

Cheers,
McoreD

I've been looking at getting this one. Any thoughts about it would be welcome. :)

WinTV-PVR-350



Here is a nice source for info in this area that a friend gave me.

Capture sections:

Capture articles
How to capture Video, TV,Cam using a TV-Card/Videocard with Video-in
How to capture using WinTV PVR cards.
How to capture using a ATI All-In-Wonder or other ATIs Capture Cards.
How to capture using a Dazzle card.
How to capture Analog Video using a Digital Camcorder.
How to capture DV Cam using a firewire/DV/iLink card.
How to capture other
What capture card should I get?

Thank you so much for sharing the link KingCobra. I wasn't aware of that page in DVD-R Help. :)

About the WinTV-PVR-350 :
I would love to have that All-in-One Hardware Encoder. It is really good that you have the ability to

-- watch TV
-- listen to the Radio
-- capture DVD Quality Movies via a Camcorder
-- record TV Shows in DVD Quality
-- record Radio Programs to WMA9/MP3 Format
All of those just for $199 which is really cool.

Although I would rather prefer to pay bit more extra and have all of them as an External Device.

You mean something like this?




I understand the reviews on this unit are very good. Would you consider this top of the line stuff for the do-it-yourself guy at home. :wub:

Exactly! :)
Max RRP: Only $299.00?
Wow, very cheap compared to the prices of those hardware I introduced in the above post: Canopus Let?s EDIT RT, Pinnacle Studio 8 Deluxe.
And still does DVD Quality encoding at 720 * 576 MPEG2.
Excellent choice!

These were the key features I was after

• Real-time hardware encoding to MPEG2?
• DVD Quality (MPEG2 at 720 * 576) ?

FYI: I prefer external hardware just because I don't like it to draw power from the CPU. (Same theory as External modems are more preferred than Internal modems.)

Cheers,
McoreD

Edit: I didn't see anywhere it mentioned Real-time encoding to MPEG2. So KingCobra, be careful. :huh:

This is a good thread. It made me look at the back of my PC and guess what? The MSI Video card I have in this machine has a video in/out jack. I'd misplaced the adaptor. Wow! I'm going to bring the VCR in here and try to do some VHS conversion in the next few days. This adaptor for the G4MX440 (low end) MSI Video card can accept composite or S-Video.

Point being, sometimes those capture jacks are there, but we forget about them, or worse have lost the adaptor plugs.

And this is in addition to the firewire port that is on my Soundblaster Audigy card, which is real easy to overlook or forget about, too.

A friend of mine said his ATI All in Wonder card the (7500 type) would do TV and all that on it, so i was considering that, but I relized that I wanted high quality because my wife is who will see this and I want her to know I put lots of time in it!
I was shopping at newegg.com and go figure they had that for 179.00! I think that will be the perfect solution for me! The external one I found for $254, but thats a little out of my price range! Thanks for all the help! Just one last thing, will that one above do real time encoding? Just a thought!

Thanks,
~PCTech

~*McoreD*~

Yes it does :D

Little off subject, since this thread is analog input and not digital. But, the capture routine is about the same.

Just finished my capture project of 15 digital video cam tapes my wife made over the past few years. Total is about 50 GB of mpeg 2 files that are all burned to DVD now. I used Pinnacle Studio 8.4 and Ulead Movie Factory v 3.0 for the project. Most of it was with ULead MF, but for reasons I can't figure, MF stopped recording a few times after 30 mintues or so. In those cases I used Studio 8.4 to do the capture.

However, Studio 8.4 crashed every time I tried to edit the captures. I ended up burning everyting to DVD using Ulead MF 3.0. Very good program.

In principle NeroVision ought to do all this--that is capture and burn. I tried it twice and each time the program froze.

The guy who can take the best parts of each program and put them together will be the Bill Gates of video.

Gonna start my project of covnerting some very special VHS tapes to digital now. :)

Well I have my new toy since last Thursday night. I've spent all my free time playing with it. I needed a new video card anyway, the Geforce2 just wouldn't cut it anymore.



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