vhs to dvd using tv tuner card

[axisaxis]

Any suggestions?

 

[Ronstang]

Why waste your time, and I mean a lot of time. You have to do this in real time and the result is going to be relatively low quality that isn't going to look too good on today's HD TVs. It would be much easier to get one of the upconverting VHS players.

 

[axisaxis]

Well i need to convert everything for my parents lol they wanna get rid of all the vhs players in da house

 

[Janooo]

Do you have TV card already?

 

[axisaxis]

not yet im lookin into whch to get

 

[axisaxis]

bump, needs to select somethin by tommorow

 

[axisaxis]

Think i gonna go with the dazzle dvd recorder...ne OTHER suggestions plz

 

[taltamir]

the ONLY reason to do that is if you have some family movies on VHS...
Otherwise, just get DVD player and maybe a netflix subscription or something.

Also, I want some input on this one... is it still legal (in the USA, I know it is legal in some other countries) to download a DVD if you purchased the show on it on a VHS?

 

[axisaxis]

that is my reason...i need to get a card but i dont know which offers best quality.

 

[Peter]

Nevermind the quality ... resolution and sharpness on VHS is so poor to begin with, it won't matter.

Something simple, like Leadtek's WinFast VC100XP, will do. This is a pure video digitizer, the MPEG-ization into DVD format will have to be done in software. This requires a halfway strong CPU and a fast and big harddisk. Advantage: You're free to choose your conversion parameters - playtime vs. quality, resolution, sharpness.
The exact same applies to any TV card you buy, as long as it has a composite and/or SVideo input.

Alternatively, you can use a USB video input dongle. These do the MPEGization in hardware, with little CPU load, and you'll never have to store the uncompressed video. Drawback: You can't tune the MPEG parameters much.

Then there are VHS tape players with direct USB output.

And finally, there are standalone VHS/DVD combo players that can copy tape-to-disk on the fly, by the push of a button.

 

[axisaxis]

Originally posted by: Peter
Nevermind the quality ... resolution and sharpness on VHS is so poor to begin with, it won't matter.

Something simple, like Leadtek's WinFast VC100XP, will do. This is a pure video digitizer, the MPEG-ization into DVD format will have to be done in software. This requires a halfway strong CPU and a fast and big harddisk. Advantage: You're free to choose your conversion parameters - playtime vs. quality, resolution, sharpness.
The exact same applies to any TV card you buy, as long as it has a composite and/or SVideo input.

Alternatively, you can use a USB video input dongle. These do the MPEGization in hardware, with little CPU load, and you'll never have to store the uncompressed video. Drawback: You can't tune the MPEG parameters much.

Then there are VHS tape players with direct USB output.

And finally, there are standalone VHS/DVD combo players that can copy tape-to-disk on the fly, by the push of a button.

Im running on Xeon 3110 which is basically a 8400 dual core at 3.0 ghz with a SATA hard disk i think this might work...not sure haha

 

[jkresh]

the main question you need to ask is how important is quality. A card with mpeg hardware encoding will be the fastest option (your cpu should also be fast enough for realtime encoding to mpeg 2) but if you import the video in raw (lots of space) and then encode later the quality will be better (with a good codec package) you will also have the option of mpeg 2 or mpeg 4 or other formats (dvix,xvid...). Your vhs should have composite or ideally svideo out, so you just need a card with composite/svideo in (if you have a high quality vhs player iwth component out that might give you better quality but component in on the pc is hard to find (hauppuage makes an hd pvr that has mpeg 4 encoding in hardware). Anandtech did some reviews of tv tunner cards (with hardware encoders) around 1-2 years ago, not much has changed since then on analog tunners so those reviews might be a good starting point as to what to buy if you wanted to go with something with hardware encoding.

 

[axisaxis]

Originally posted by: jkresh
the main question you need to ask is how important is quality. A card with mpeg hardware encoding will be the fastest option (your cpu should also be fast enough for realtime encoding to mpeg 2) but if you import the video in raw (lots of space) and then encode later the quality will be better (with a good codec package) you will also have the option of mpeg 2 or mpeg 4 or other formats (dvix,xvid...). Your vhs should have composite or ideally svideo out, so you just need a card with composite/svideo in (if you have a high quality vhs player iwth component out that might give you better quality but component in on the pc is hard to find (hauppuage makes an hd pvr that has mpeg 4 encoding in hardware). Anandtech did some reviews of tv tunner cards (with hardware encoders) around 1-2 years ago, not much has changed since then on analog tunners so those reviews might be a good starting point as to what to buy if you wanted to go with something with hardware encoding.

Thanks! Quality is very important. What would u reccomend to encod it. this is really my first time doing any type of video work. also, how can you import the raw data? dontt most tuners record mpeg and such?

 

[katank]

Usually you have an option for the tuner to output just raw AVI. Then you can compress it with DivX or Xvid or etc. Look up doom9.org for video compression articles. Lame MP3 encoder is pretty good for audio.

One piece of advice regarding tuners. You may want to get a HDTV capable tuner given the fact that broadcasts are changing to HD soon. Of course, it's not necessary if all you are doing is this conversion. The option will probably still be nice though.

 

[Peter]

The Xeon is very much capable of converting the stream in realtime, no need to go through an intermediate AVI file.

Plain PCI video or TV tuner cards always supply the raw stream, with adjustable horizontal resolution. From there, you adjust your MPEG2 encoding parameters the way your software allows.

Once you got all the movie pieces together, you use another piece of software to make it a proper DVD with a menu, chapters and all that.

Such software usually comes with the cards, and then there's 3rd party stuff like Nero's DVD making suite that also works quite well without overdoing it.

But again: If you're used to DVD quality, you will find that the quality of VHS recordings is surprisingly poor - so don't expect "high quality" MPEG2 encoding to make /any/ difference whatsoever.

 

[axisaxis]

Haha. Does anyone have any favorite tuners out there that will do the job?

 

[taltamir]

how many of those home movies do you have... There are bound to be local shops that can do the conversion for you.
I used to work in one... they buy a 100$ DVD writer deck, and plugging a VHS deck to it using coax (coax can do any quality you want, even HD; also that was way back in the day, you can probably use HDMI or component nowadays) then plug the video out from the dvd writer deck to the TV to monitor it. Hit play on the VHS, and record on the DVD... just remember to "finalize" the disk when you are done copying before taking it out.

http://www.newegg.com/Store/Su...490&name=DVD-Recorders

Actually, just buy one of these and do it yourself. You end up keeping a DVD player that can record to DVD, from any source. (make sure to test the whole disk, not just a part of it).

Make sure to burn extra copies of the DVDs, and test them every now and then, and replace defective copies. optical media degrades over time, but unlike VHS tape, it doesn't cause quality loss, rather it either work (there is built in error correct), or it fails to read and the data is lost.

Also store it in a cool, dry, dark! place, and make sure to put only one disk per jewel case (you can fit to, but the data layer will adhere to the other disk, and will tear off when you seperate them, ruining the disk).

PS. if you want it to go to a PC, you need what is called a "capture card", not a TV tuner.

 

[Modelworks]

The best card to do this with is actually the cheapest:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16815100120
$17 shipped.

Has drivers that are solid in Vista/Winxp/32 & 64 bit
Svideo and Composite inputs.
I use it with virtualdub and dscaler, both free software

 

[axisaxis]

Originally posted by: Modelworks
The best card to do this with is actually the cheapest:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16815100120
$17 shipped.

Has drivers that are solid in Vista/Winxp/32 & 64 bit
Svideo and Composite inputs.
I use it with virtualdub and dscaler, both free software

This has live capture and everything else needed? If so I think ill order this like tommorow. Thanks! Was about to spend a 100 bux on a WinTV card

 

[Modelworks]

Originally posted by: axisaxis

Originally posted by: Modelworks
The best card to do this with is actually the cheapest:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16815100120
$17 shipped.

Has drivers that are solid in Vista/Winxp/32 & 64 bit
Svideo and Composite inputs.
I use it with virtualdub and dscaler, both free software

This has live capture and everything else needed? If so I think ill order this like tommorow. Thanks! Was about to spend a 100 bux on a WinTV card

Yeah, the only thing this card lacks is a tuner. But if you are not going to connect an antenna or cabletv to capture from then you don't need a tuner.

Just connect the vcr to the composite connector on the card. Or svhs connector if the vcr is svhs.

I've used mine for months to capture video off a satellite box.

 

[Peter]

That KWorld card takes the same apporach as the (much older) Leadtek I had recommended - just the video decoder chip, no tuner. Although the later Conexant chip on the KWorld has the potential for better image quality (in color depth and contrast, mainly), I'd trust Leadtek's software much more than KWorlds.

So if you're planning to use some 3rd party software anyhow, then I'd say it's safe to get the KWorld ... as long as at least the hardware driver is working properly.

 

[taltamir]

if those are family movies... its important to keep them intact.. I recommend that you capture them to a file on the PC, then make parity records of them (par2), and then make some back ups of the movies and the par2 files.

 

[axisaxis]

Originally posted by: taltamir
if those are family movies... its important to keep them intact.. I recommend that you capture them to a file on the PC, then make parity records of them (par2), and then make some back ups of the movies and the par2 files.

Couldn't i just make copys of the raw avi data?

 

[Janooo]

Originally posted by: axisaxis

Originally posted by: taltamir
if those are family movies... its important to keep them intact.. I recommend that you capture them to a file on the PC, then make parity records of them (par2), and then make some back ups of the movies and the par2 files.

Couldn't i just make copys of the raw avi data?

Resolution of 720x480 is about 1.1GB raw avi per minute.
I don't think it's a good idea to store the raw avi.

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: axisaxis

Originally posted by: taltamir
if those are family movies... its important to keep them intact.. I recommend that you capture them to a file on the PC, then make parity records of them (par2), and then make some back ups of the movies and the par2 files.

Couldn't i just make copys of the raw avi data?

the codec and file format (avi) is really not related to what I said.
Read this : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parchive

It explains what parity records are (well, parity archives actually). You can make those of any file, regardless of format (so, raw AVI or something else)

but basically:

Parchive (or parity volume set archive) is a Sourceforge.net project that was created in 2001 to design and implement an idea by Tobias Rieper and Stefan Wehlus for a parity file format.[1] These parity files use a forward error correction-style system that can be used to perform data verification, and allow recovery when data is lost or corrupted.