VHS to DVD

PCD

@haggard

Sorry I have not replied earlier, been away. Thanks for the advice. No luck so far, probably my usb 2.0 port (in pci card) needs more power. Thinking of getting a powered hub.

Regards, pcd.

PCD

Just an update !

I picked up a Pinnacle PCTV Rave for £25, very impressed with it. Near perfect copy of vhs tape to cd. The best thing is, it capures in mpeg1 in real time, so no need for hours of converting with tmpgenc ! The files produced are small, about 50mb for 3 minutes. Very simple to use, no messing about with audio out of sync. For best quality try varying the brightness, sharpness etc. Tried on a system with pentium 3, 698 mHz, 128 mb of RAM. Regards, pcd.

T_G

Thanks PCD, that sounds good!!

T_G I only believe stuff that comes straight from Mr. Horses mouth!

PCD

Yes, it gives more reliable recordings for tv channels directly than thru cifs. And one can either copy to a cd or watch on the dreambox using cifs. Regards, pcd.

T_G

I just got one of those for 5 Euros from Ebay. Is this the right one? Can it be that cheap??

It said:Pinnacle PCTV Rave StereoEdition

Attached Thumbnails

   

T_G I only believe stuff that comes straight from Mr. Horses mouth!

PCD

Yes T_G, it looks like the one I used. See what you think of it. Regards.

johnny jukebox

Hello

The best way is to buy a Plextor ConvertX USB unit model PX-TV402U. nice piece of kit that really works well. You can convert and burn your VHS to DVD on the fly or save them HD for any possible editing. Comes with software. All the work is done in the Plextor and transfered to the DVD via USB 2.0. It has the added attraction of having a built in TV tuner as well. Works well with all TV and video standards. You can also use it to back up DVD movies in real time.............. read all about it here

http://www.plextor-europe.com/produc...VR%20PX-TV402U

I have one its well cool.

BarMoo

Would it be daft to say that outputting RF from your VHS into a TV card introduces 'noise'. This noise will be encoded as picture. As a result your treasured VHS's might not come out as best they could: given that MPEG is lossy enough anyway???

Mind, at the beginning you did say 'cheap'. LOL.

[have a feeling I have said this already] - its much easier to have a cheapish DVD/hdd recorder like my Samsung HR-720. Using EP (VHSish quality) via SCART. I use 9Gb RAM discs so if I need to edit, I can just throw it in the PC. Else the PC isn't being dominated by my archiving and the recorder is still free as a PVR. €220.00 can't be bad. LG do a cheaper one AFAIK.

Have Fun, Moo.

PCD

I have used the pinnacle pctv to convert music videos, can't say I noticed any 'noise'. If there are moving banners they look a bit jumpy, thats all!

Regards, pcd.

BarMoo

LOL, that says it all really.

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Have Fun, Moo.

PCD

Hey, I watch them for the 'music', I am not interested whether or how much hassan loves fatima !

popovp

I intend to buy a TV card. What are requirements about HDD size – is 40 GB enough?My PC system: Celeron 1700 MHz, 374 MB RAM, 40 GB/7200 rev/min.
Thanks in advance.

BarMoo

* popovp,

OT 1st: Me thinks you have 384MB of RAM . Its not 'normal' to have anything otherthan this order: 128/256/512/1024. If you have been mixing and matching - buy another compatible 256MB so you have a min. 'normal' RAM set-up of 512MB.

Is 40Gb enough? How long is a piece of string? Like with the Plextor (link in post above from jukebox ) - it will depend on how you encode your stuff and what compression rate you use. Divx can be devastatingly efficient, MPEG2 can be super hungry for space.

The Plextor recommends at least 10Gb of hdd.

Not that long ago I added a second (160GB) hdd to my PC. The native hdd is 60GB. Now, the new drive is well over half full of media already

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Have Fun, Moo.

popovp

Thank you for advice BarMoo. Yes 128+256 MB and after upgrating PC works sensibly better.Perhaps I'l buy a Plextor ConvertX.

kamaleon

A great way to rip vhs into digital is to use the svideo/composite in of a miniDV camcorder, this will do the "digitalizing" on the fly and then firewire it to a PC. works like a charm and it's usually called "analog passthrough". Of course if your camcorder can't be input analog signal AND output DV through firewire to a PC at the same time, then you can always record it to the miniDV first tape then later on inport it to your PC.
You can then edit your video, captured in DV, author it, encode it, etc etc.
Use virtualdub for fiddlin your video and tmpenc for encoding it into mepg2 (DVD), it's the dogs bollox.

Another way which has been referred to on this thread and which can prove to be alrightish is to use a random pci tv card with analog inputs, capture the video then encode it. the downside to it is that you need a quite decently fast PC to capture and huge space on your hard drive.
The advantage of the camcorder method is that it will convert your video to DV (which is compressed 1:5) thus not taking as much space and CPU time to encode as the tv tuner card method. Using the later method though, you can use some codec like mjpeg or huffuyv to reduce the size of your capture, and still have a good quality.

You can find loadsa useful info on doom9.org

BarMoo

I recently went for the Pinnacle DVC 170 Seems to do its job, LOL.

I like the Firewire approach - but I haven't seen a camera in years that lets you put an external source into it [God forbid!!!]. In fact, my very old SONY Video8 Pro is the last camera I saw that let me do that.

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Have Fun, Moo.

kamaleon

my panasonic 3ccd nv GS400 (quite state of the art, really) has composite AND svideo input.
A lot of the sony ones only have composite (don't have svideo anymore). But there's an awful lot of camcorders that still do analog inputs, i think even the latest sony HD/AVC one has their proprietary analog input (composite only AFAIK)
the day they stop doing it will be a shame!!

So you went for an on-board HW compression chip did ya. Personally, i wouldn't, but then again, if it makes you happy

Saturlight

I just connect scart to scart from VCR to stand alone DVD recorder. Does me. Then mayb put the DVD into the pc and shrink it, to store more film if I want to reburn the DVD.

I wish women would stop saying I'm very good looking. It's embarrassing...

kamaleon

well yeah, but then again you need a dvd recorder for that

BarMoo

If I had the money, sorry, had won the lottery I would have bought a 1U rack-mount affair that does everything type thing. Much as I have with my analogue audio toys.

Sadly, I had to buy something on the fly (tedious story of DVD converting) and my choice was limited to the area where I was shopping (the local geek store CONRAD) didn't have the kit I was after so I ended up in a department store. And as we all know, department stores only sell high mark-up shiny things: hence the Pinnacle.

To be fair, the compression has to be done somewhere, I can save files in DV - and that's all what was needed for the job in hand ;-))

Why have I come over all protective about my purchase? Hehehe.

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Have Fun, Moo.

kamaleon

don't get me wrong about my comment
I just meant that i wouldn't buy a HW compression card, as that can't be tweaked and you're compelled to using some sort of proprietary codec...
and it's usually more expensive than buying a low-end capture card with a BT878 or a philips chip or whatever, capture it bulk with some kind of codec like mjpeg or something, then do all the encoding you wish, as you wish
BTW, did you just say it can encode in DV?

BarMoo

I didn't, don't worry. Its already collecting dust. Must try a macrovision VHS ??

I am just pissed that I don't have any money to buy an all-in-one 1U rackmount digital encoder (that also has a TBC and strips Macrovision before going to any format I so bloody well like).

Yes, this shiny thing can export in DV - but not the DV that Adobe Premiere accepts. Had to pass it through another program to provide the uncompressed audio that Premeire likes

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Have Fun, Moo.

kamaleon

but does the tiny marvel has an onboard HW chip that encodes or is it just your CPU that does the trick? must admit i'm a bit lazy to google for it

BarMoo

It has a real-time Streaming Media Encoder, some SDRAM and a USB Microcontroller amongst other things all onboard.

See attached datasheet for the 7007SB Encoder.

Does that mean Macrovision stripping - Now I really must find out ;-))

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Attached Files

7007sb[1].pdf (175.8 KB, 6 views)

Have Fun, Moo.

kamaleon

went briefly through your pdf barmoo,
does that mean it can actually HW encode in divx and mpeg2, and all that?
What's the max CBR for mpeg2 you can do with it?
(couldn't find out any info about DV though)