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Hardware and software required to transfer VHS to DVD


Bad boy Warrior

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You need a capture card. There's loads of them around $50. Don't go for something too cheap, Hauppauge cards are OK. Some cheaper cards suck quite a bit (especially the drivers -- sometimes the generic bt8x8 drivers help though, but still a bad idea).

Software wise, I haven't kept up with it all. Personally, back when I was doing analog capture, I used to use VirtualDubVCR which was quite good at handling all the little issues (like sync problems that you get with VHS tapes and what not; compressing with a MJPEG codec). Then if you want to transfer to DVD, you'll need an MPEG2 encoder and something to author your menus and all that.

There's probably software suites that do all of this these days (probably not quite as well, but closer to a "one click" operation)...

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Also, the operation is quite CPU intensive, and there is however some degradation of quality / loosing of sync if you don't have good, fast hardware.

Depending on the amount of VHS you need to convert and the time you want to spend on them, a hardware solution may be faster/more convenient (even if you have to spend some more money).

Here some ideas are listed:

http://www.howtodothings.com/electronics/a...vhs-to-dvd.html

Of course if you need/want to edit the videos, add "special effects" and the like the PC solution is the one to choose.

jaclaz

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Also, the operation is quite CPU intensive, and there is however some degradation of quality / loosing of sync if you don't have good, fast hardware.
The analog video capture card has hardware MPEG-2 onboard so even on a P3 500MHz it will work flawless. First you capture, and then you edit, no need in real time ;). Nice link by the way, very helpful.

Bad boy Warrior,

I would look at products too from Pinnacle, most are external USB capture cards and come with a not to bad edit capture program, and like crahak pointed out, there are nice "filter/capture programs" that will give you a smoother image.

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video capture card has hardware MPEG-2 onboard so even on a P3 500MHz it will work flawless.

I think there may be a "if the" missing in front of this (not all cards do MPEG2 compression in hardware). But nowadays there's probably only like $10 difference between the cards that do and those that don't, so no real point in trying to save money there. Either ways, capturing isn't that CPU demanding using several codecs (e.g. MJPEG). I've done it hundreds of times on an old 1.x GHz box with great results.

But yeah, using a DVD recorder to record the output from the VHS player is simpler, and for just one tape, I wouldn't bother to buy stuff to do it, I'd just hand the tape to a shop that does this for a small fee.

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I am not sure if this'll work but if if your video card has a Video-In/Video-Out function port, you may be able to connect the output of the VCR to the card and watch/transcode/capture the video? Back in the day, I had a Leadtek 7800GT with the VIVO function; and it was claimed in the manual that I could connect an external source like a TV box and capture the video. But i never used it even once so I don't know how well it worked. :unsure:

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