I could use some help (DVD & VHS)

[unclebob]

Dear Friends,

Here’s the long and the short of it. I want to be able to transfer some older family VHS & 8mm tapes to DVD. I also want to be able to copy some DVD movies to DVD. I gather from questions that I’ve asked that the best way to do that is to copy these mediums to my Hard Drive and then transfer them to a DVD disk. What I believe I need (and you can help me with this) is a DVD +- Burner, something that will enable me to connect my VCR to my computer, and software that will enable me to edit & enhance my VHS tapes and in some cases compress my DVD’s so they will fit on a regular DVD disk without loosing quality (and if you have suggestions on which disks work best, that too). I’m a poor working stiff so I want the highest quality for the lowest price. If you guys (and girls) have some ideas, some names, and or some prices (and maybe where to purchase) I’d really appreciate them. How to’s will help as well. Whatever you can give me I’ll take. If it helps, looking at my systems properties it says that I have a AMD Anthlon™ XP 1800+ (processor), 256 megs of RAM, I use Windows 98SE, and have about 33 gigs (of 60 gig) available on my Hard Drive, a 3D fx Voodoo Banshee Display Driver, and I don’t know what else. Anyone who has equipment similar to mine and has had success at doing the things I want to do please advise me as to what you used. Anything you can tell me will be appreciated. Thanks in advance you guys (and gals) have been most helpful in the past.

Thanks & God Bless
Uncle Bob

[HeadBand]

if you are going to capture large lengths of video you should think about upgrading windows to either xp or 2000 because they support the ntfs file system which can store larger files than the 4gb limit of fat32

you also might think about waiting a couple months untill dual layer dvd comes out so you can dirrectly copy an entire dvd....you could put your vhs and 8mm onto vcds if you really need to right now

[phenious]

First thing you probably want to do is upgrade to winXP for $99 and get some extra ram so you have 512MB. You can do without these things but it wont be pretty. Next I suggest a Pioneere A06 RETAIL. I suggest this cause its a good burner. Older then the newest ones so it will be cheap. And it comes with some great editing software that will let you capture video and edit stuff and then burn the movies to a DVD with a basic menu. You will need some sort of capture card to get movies off your VHS. I recomend the ATI TV Wonder PRO (note the pro version) which can be had for $50 or so on E-bay or $75 bought direct from ATI.com. But I also recomend going to review sites and reading about the strengths and weaknesses of each capture card and choose the best one for the money From there you should be setup with everything you need... capture card to get video offf your Cameras and VHS and the DVD burner came with a load of software to get ya going.

-: phenious :-

[John Prophet]

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewprodu...cription=tv2000

any of these "tv2000xp" pci cards are cool..they have gotten nice reviews from people here and elsewhere. They are probably the best and easiest way to get stuff from a vcr onto the computer.

[dr_roberts49]

Uncle Bob, what model of 8mm camera do you have? Are your 8mm videos on analog or digital?

I have a huge collection of family video on analog 8mm tapes, and a few older ones on VHS. I got a SONY DVD minicamcorder this Christmas, and moved to that format. Unfortunately, my older SONY Hi-8 (my 2nd SONY camcorder in 12 years) bit the dust a few weeks ago, so I had no way to run my 8mm analog tapes.

Last month, I bought SONY's TRV350 camcorder on sale at Best Buy ($449). This model records in digital on 8mm digital tapes or Hi-8 tapes. It will also playback the older analog tapes, which most all the others did not, including other SONY models. Another great feature on this model, is its ability to work as a pass-through for converting from analog to digital. This camera has USB 2.0 and firewire outputs, so it goes right into the computer. It also has super 8 and audio/video RCA input jacks so I can connect to my VCR. More expensive than most capture cards, but the quality, especially the 8mm analog tapes is awesome.

Robert

[desmocat]

This might help you out:

http://h71036.www7.hp.com/hho/cache/...0-225-121.aspx

HP dvd movie writer 3000

about 300 bucks.

direct link to it:

http://www.shopping.hp.com/cgi-bin/h...85&cat_level=1

[john_phoenix]

One of my setups for converting VHS to DVD is as follows.

PIII 933, 512Mb RAM ATI Studio PCTV card & Pioneer 106D burner.

Software is:-
AVI_IO for capturing.
Pinnacle studio 8 For rendering to MPEG
TMPGEnc DVD Author to convert to DVD format with menus.
DVD Shrink to compress it to 4.3Gb

I know it is quite long winded way of converting but utill the DVD Shrink process my movie is full screen high res. So my DVD's are very good quality. You'd think I had purchased the DVD version apart from my menus are not very imaginitive yet