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Old 2005-02-03, 10:53 AM
h_vargas
 
Re: vhs>dvd: least expensive acceptable way

Quote:
Originally Posted by cgskippy
I'm going to be in possession very soon of a few low generation phish videos and would like to attempt a dvd conversion and authoring. I've done some research about capture devices and standalone burners but there seems to be potential problems with dropped frames and overall quality of the conversion. If someone could lead me in the right direction, it would be greatly appreciated. Please keep in mind that i don't have thousands of $ here to throw around. Thanks, cgs
if you have a digital camcorder with analog-to-DV pass through, that will work, and provides excellent quality results.

if not, two words: Canpus capture card. i haven't personally tested their realtime MPEG-2 capturing cards, but any of their analog-to-DV capture cards work fabulously (i belive all of them have the same chip for converting analog video to DV, so there's not much sense in getting their most expensive model with all the bells & whistles, unless that's what you really want). their ADVC-100 is a very popular model. there's a device by a different company, which is basically the exact same as the Canopus ADVC-100, called the Datavideo DAC-100. the only real differences between these two models are this: the Canopus model has an "audio/video sync lock" switch, and the Canopus costs a good chunk more.

but don't be misleaded into thinking you need the audio/video sync lock... DV (Digital Video .AVI file format), inherently, keeps audio/video synchronized (provided it's in sync on the source video, of course). so i wouldn't say the Canopus ADVC-100 is worth an extra $50+ just for that feature. i used the DAC-100 to capture a good 30 VHS tapes, and never had any problems with audio/video synchronization.

in using these types of capture devices, all you do then is encode the video to MPEG-2 and extract the PCM (WAV) audio... then, if you must, convert it to AC3, and author the DVD. it's a several step process to go from VHS > DVD, but easy once you get your routine of it down pat.

if you only have a handful of videos you want converted, I'd avise looking around and seeing if someone's willing to do it for you. but if you have a ton of tapes, then i can understand putting close to $200 into buying a capture device and converting your VHS tapes.

hope this helps.
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