With the demise of certain companies and the subsequent improbability of their material being released on DVD I'm wondering how practical it would be for me to transfer my VHS tapes to DVD myself. Is anybody doing this?
Yes - I've done it. It depends on how fancy you want to get as to how easy it is and how much software you need. If you want to do a professional job with chapter stops and menus, the task is much more complicated. If you just want it to play and fast-forward, no problem.
There are two bottlenecks that need to be addressed in order to get a quality usable product: raw processing power (you need a modern computer with a sizable amount of ram - I'd suggest at least a 2.0GHz P4 400MHz 512MB cache with 1GB of system PC2700 DDR SDRAM) and a large & very fast hard drive system (both the data drive - look for one with an 8MB cache - and the DVD burner set as masters on their own IDE channels). You'll need a video capture card or a video card that has capture capabilities built in (a good choice is the ATI All-In-Wonder 8500DV) and a good DVD burner (NEC, Pioneer, Sony).
In bulk (100 2X-speed DVD-R discs), media costs are now in the $1/disc range. With good hardware support, meaning a computer meeting the above specs, the only coasters you get will be your own mistakes. Scrimping in the hardware almost guarantees a high disc failure rate.
Building such a computer is actually rather easy - and a much better choice than buying Dell or HP. And the parts can all be bought from one or two places on-line at great prices.
I don't plan on getting fancy, at least not right away. Building the system isn't a problem (would Hardware skimp on hardware? LOL). What about getting the signal from my VHS to the computer and subsequently onto the DVD? Any pointers, gotcha's there?
If you go with the All-In-Wonder version of one of ATI's video boards (again, I highly recommend the AIW 8500DV - it is the best of the "older" generation of their cards and is still available in "bulk OEM" for about $165 - NOT the refurbished version - from newegg.com - new generation models are the AIW 9700 and the AIW 9800 and are much more expensive - great for gaming but no better for DVD production), input is already there. The only problem you will encounter is that many commercial videotapes are copy protected and cannot be copied. There are other forums which cover the foibles of macrovision; it is beyond the scope of the ADT board.
I remember your desire for the fast SCSI array from the Dream System thread. SCSI is nice but the extra expense is really not needed for this project as long as you have the needed IDE channels and one of the 8MB cache drives. I'm using a GigaByte GA-8PE800 Ultra motherboard (i845PE chipset) which has 4 IDE channels (8 devices) instead of the usual 2 (only 4 devices). I have a CD/DVD reader and an Iomega Zip drive as master & slave, respectively, on the 1st IDE channel and a DVD/CD burner as master on the 2nd IDE channel. I have a 40GB hard drive (8MB cache) for O/S and applications as drive "C:" on the 3rd IDE channel and a 120GB hard drive (8MB cache) as drive "D:" on the 4th IDE channel - each set as "master" (you could also use just 1 large drive and either petition it or leave it as a single petition). Works like a charm.
Two last things: horsepower makes DVD image creation go faster but does not increase DVD burning speed. Disk I/O bottlenecks are what create expensive (in both time & money) coasters. Regardless of your processor power, burning a DVD should be the ONLY task running on your computer during the burning process.
You could save alot of hassle and buy a stand-alone dvd recorder from philips or panasonic, depending if you want to go with DVD+R or DVD-R. At reasonable price you could dupe tape to DVD and also stuff off TV.
In the Mac world it is a very easy procedure thanks to iMovie and iDVD. All you really need is a Mac with at least a G3 chip, a FireWire port, a DV Bridge (something to convert your VHS tapes into a digital format), and of course a DVD burner. You can even get fancy with your DVD navigation controls and chapter set up.
Thanks guys. I appreciate the links GaySatyr. After careful consideration, I decided to test drive a stand-alone DVD recorder to see if it met my needs. I purchased the Panasonic DMR-E30, which supports the DVD-R and DVD-RAM formats. It has 3 sets of AV inputs (with S-Video), which allows me to hook up my other players through it. The salesman assured me that this unit would allow me to do titles and put together scenes from different tapes. For less than $400 and with a 30 day, no-hassle return policy, I decided, what the heck.
I'm happy to report that this is a good unit for transferring tape to DVD. The picture quality is very faithful to the original material. You can pause during recording, or stop and start recording, whichever you prefer. Pausing does not split the video into separate scenes; stopping and starting does. Stopping and starting adds more admin overhead and so reduces your available record time some, but it allows you to create titles for your individual scenes. Creating titles isn't fun to do, as you have to highlight each letter onscreen and select it to add it to the title, but I'm not sure there's any better way to do it with a stand-alone unit. You can also create a title for the overall DVD, and add 'markers' throughout the disk. There are two ways to add markers, on-the-fly, or by time code. So far I've tested on-the-fly. That's not very accurate and so I can't recommend it. I'm hoping using the time code will be more effective.
This unit has it's quirks. It has TV I/O and wants to find your TV channels every time it powers up. I've had to turn it off and on after 'finalizing' a DVD and removing it so it would recognize that the new DVD I just put in wasn't locked. But, all in all, if all you need is a good tool to migrate your tapes to DVD and add very basic functionality, I think you'll find this fits the bill.
Although not always directly related to VHS -> DVD their tips should help nonetheless.
I have the AIW 8500DV. Rather nice card. It's a good tv tuner. As far as video capture goes you may want a Video Card that works under XP, is compatible with Virtual DUB. Last time I checked the AIW wasn't compatible with Virtual DUB, even with the VFW wrapper.
http://www.avisynth.org/index.php?page=HuffYUV
The above Video codec is a lossless codec and the video quality is amazing. This is to capture the raw footage with minimal compression, much better than the MJPEG codec(s) I've seen. From there you can use TMPEG to encode to SVCD or DVD formats. You can also consider DivX or XVID codecs as well. Now that divx is trying to be a legit thing.
You need big fast drives! Possibly may want to consider 10000RPM scsi drives. or the new 10K RPM SATA drive from WD. OF course you may want to check out: http://www.storagereview.com to see their current reviews of who's the fastest mother out there.
The recorder is capable of recording at various bit rates. A lower bit rate means that you can get more material onto a DVD, however you may lose image quality. The unit can record XP, which yields 1 hour of very high bit-rate imagery, down to EP, which yields 6 hours. SP appears to give me faithful reproduction of video tape quality, so I use that, which yields approximately 2 hours. The reason the time is approximate is that when you make multiple recordings space is consumed by 'housekeeping' information, reducing what's available for image capture.
just started doing it, dead easy i just bought a Panasonic E50 DVD Recorder(multi region) for £230! linked my VHS recorder to my DVD recorder, changed the "EXT1" and hit record
thats it
------------------ Regards and Thanks ShiWarrior - - BIG Breast Fan, in the likes of Minka & Linsey McKenzie - -
