So I'm ready to convert my homemade VHS tapes to DVD discs using a video capture card, but have a question. What video capture card or usb/firewire device do you guys recommend? I've searched across PC online stores and couldn't make up my mind! I'm the type who is video/audio quality frenzy, so I have in mind capture devices which still keep a good quality in production. At least something around or under $500.
I also have some PAL ones of when I was a toddler back in France , but the VCR won't matter since I have a Multistandard one, althought I blew the PAL TV! . (I connected my PAL/Secam SNES AV cable to my NTSC-U Nintendo 64, powered it on, BOOM! 15 yr old TV croaks away!)
Have a look at those combined vcr/dvd recorders. as long as you can record from one to another (may require a code being input to disable macrovison) you're in business, and its a lot easier than using a pc.
Thanks, but I was also looking to edit some stuff, like adding titles to like a Happy Birthday clip, or editing sports clips.
Check out one of these: http://ostg.pricegrabber.com/rating_getprodrev.php/product_id=9154006/id_type=M Cyberhome 1600 Dvd recorder I got one of these for $99, works like a charm. Plus after you've recorded your VHS tape you can easily rip the video.
I use an I.O. Data video capture card that is full of some very impressive DSP effects. It can turn a shitty reception TV picture in to a perfect clear one !!! The cards you can buy are either GV-MVP or RX2 RX2W My card cost 19'000 yen which must be about 350 US dollars or there abouts. The card encodes in MPEG 2 at VBR or CBR plus you can change the screen sizes and audio kbps and well as the MPEG 2 mbps. Oh and it has a built in TV tuner making your PC in to a harddrive Video Recorder Yakumo
If you're looking for the highest quality, I'd recommend just a plain (non-MPEG hardware encoding) PCI capture card that will just output uncompressed YUY2 video - this means you'll lose as little quality as possible when editing (not to mention it's a lot easier to edit uncompressed/lossless compressed video than MPEG), and when you're finished filtering/editing/whatever you can just use some free software MPEG-2 encoder like HC or QuEnc - they're amazingly good, and tests have shown that they can equal - or even look better than encoders like CCE which cost a lot of money. And the good thing about the non-MPEG cards is that you don't need to use the shitty software that came with them - there's VirtualDub, VirtualVCR, and a few others, which offer much more flexibility. A card like that will set you back about $50-100 - there's not much difference between them all - all the modern ones use either the Connexant CX2388x or Philips SAA713x chips, and they're pretty equal (only real difference is the Philips one can do PAL-60, though you probably don't need that). I'd recommend spending the money on a big hard disk if you don't already have one, and also if you don't already have one - a high-end S-VHS VCR, as they output s-video - even normal VHS tapes store the video with luma and chroma separately (all normal VHS VCRs only output composite video), so you'll gain some picture quality and minimise colour shimmering and dot crawl and junk.
Zilog Jones has a good idea there but there is one problem. Editing uncompressed video requires a monster of a PC if you want to do it at a decent frame rate. Also with MPEG 2 cards like mine you don't need to use the software that comes with it at all. I use Virtual Dub MOD for editing and some Japanese software called Ulead Video Toolbox for audio dubing (works better than Virtual Dub plus it's real time) and joining MPEG files or what not together ready for burning to DVD via Nero Vision Express. Yakumo
not really, messing around with uncompressed is alot better, specially if you want to apply filters to it,apply filters and stuff and encode to uncompressed, then encode to mpeg2 or mpeg4.
But with a non-MPEG card you can use VirtualDub for the actual capturing too. My Pentium III 933 can play full-size MJPEG (a more-or-less lossless compression codec - similar to DV but higher bitrate with higher quality settings) at full speed no probs. Any decent-specced modern PC made in the last year or two should be able to play Huffyuv (a proper lossless codec, but the bitrate's quite high - still about 2.5 times smaller than uncompressed YUY2 video though!) full speed fine. And both of these codecs will encode fine with no dropped frames when capturing, except in the case of Huffyuv and dodgy old tapes - but any decent PC shouldn't have problems. Only real issue is that you'll need a good amount of HDD space in comparison with MPEG-2.
