System to convert VHS to DVD - advice please

[husker92]

Basically, I want to convert my old VHS tapes of my daughters growing up to DVD. Currently, I have a 1.6 pentium 4 running XP Home with 512 MB of DDR memory. I bought the Pinnacle Dazzle 80 video capture USB device a couple years ago and just now got around to setting it all up. It runs Studio 9 software.

I made my first DVD and everything worked great, the only problem is the picture is not very good. The whole point was to have the same picture, just on DVD, but that is not the case with this set up. The Dazzle 80 has a max resolution of 320 x 240 (30 fps).

Is the low max resolution my only cause of the average picture quality. I really want to use my current set up and just buy a newer video capture device, but will I get the same results? Do I need to upgrade to a faster processor and purchase a video capture card?

Anyway, I basically want a good quality process to convert my VHS tapes to DVD with a low cost. Any suggestions?

Thanks for looking.

 

[KyleSTL]

Basically, I want to convert my old VHS tapes of my daughters growing up to DVD. Currently, I have a 1.6 pentium 4 running XP Home with 512 MB of DDR memory. I bought the Pinnacle Dazzle 80 video capture USB device a couple years ago and just now got around to setting it all up. It runs Studio 9 software.

I made my first DVD and everything worked great, the only problem is the picture is not very good. The whole point was to have the same picture, just on DVD, but that is not the case with this set up. The Dazzle 80 has a max resolution of 320 x 240 (30 fps).

Is the low max resolution my only cause of the average picture quality.

Yes. And analog losses, but that's inherent to VHS (since it's an analog format).

I really want to use my current set up and just buy a newer video capture device, but will I get the same results?

You would get better results with a better card. Hauppauge makes very good TV tuners cards that also accept RCA and S-Video inputs for video conversion.

Do I need to upgrade to a faster processor and purchase a video capture card?

Better card: definitely.
Better processor [in your current system]: absolutely not.
Better processor [in a brand new system]: maybe. If you have a lot of videos to convert - yes. If you don't have many to convert, or don't mind the rate at which your computer converts the video - no.

Anyway, I basically want a good quality process to convert my VHS tapes to DVD with a low cost. Any suggestions?

A new Hauppauge card would make your current system work. However, I would advise you to upgrade to a Core2 system if the budget allows (although this will not effect quality, only efficiency). Please let us know if you're interested in speeding up the process and we can advise you with your new system.

 

[husker92]

Thanks for the advice Kyle. I am not too worried about efficiency. I could upgrad to pentium D (3 mhz) if needed, but the budget would not allow an upgrace to Core2. Does Hauppauge make a card that would work with P4 1.6? I guess I can go look that up myself.

Thanks again for looking.

 

[atreyu]

Do you have a camcorder the ones that use digital cassette.. The advantage is that you can route your video signal from VHS player via the camcorder to the PC directly. Not need for any capture cards in between. On the PC you can use software like sceneanalyzer to capture the video.. I did this to convert all my wedding VHS tapes to DVD.

 

[husker92]

Artreyu, it is so funny you just posted that. I was surfing around and found an article talking about that. What a coincidence, I have a VHS-c camcorder that I am planning to upgrade to digital (come on black friday!!!!). That could kill two birds with one stone.

Thanks again.

 

[atreyu]

you are welcome and happy converting.

 

[KyleSTL]

Does Hauppauge make a card that would work with P4 1.6?
Thanks again for looking.

It doesn't matter what processor you have. The only thing that matters is having an open PCI slot. You could also transfer this card to a new computer when you upgrade.

 

[KyleSTL]

I'm not sure why you brought up Pentium D, because they are dated, slow and rare. But, low-end Core 2s (which are many times more powerful than your computer) like E2140 & E2160 can be had for $75 and $83, respectively. Even AMD Athlon X2 (dual core) processors can be had for as little as $60 (again, many times more powerful than your current setup). Throw in $50 for 2GB of memory and $50-70 for a decent motherboard and you would cruise through your video conversion and be up-to-date in your computing capabilities.

Here are some good video capture and TV tuner cards on Newegg, pick whichever one strikes your fancy and fits in your budget:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=Property&Subcategory=47&Description=&Type=&N=2010380047&srchInDesc=&MinPrice=&MaxPrice=&Manufactory=1772&Manufactory=1409&PropertyCodeValue=1484%3A10218

 

[husker92]

KyleSTL,

Good points. Can you recommend a good motherboard? It has been a while since I built my last pc and I am not up to date on what is a good value.

Thanks

 

[KyleSTL]

A Gigabyte DA-G31MX-S2 is a very good entry level board. The GA-G33M-S2 or GA-P35-DS3L is also very good for a little more. Basically I would recommend any G31, G33, or P35 board from Asus, Gigabyte, Biostar or Intel.

 

[badders]

After doing this for many many videos, the WORST thing you can do is do it on a PC. Everything just takes so long!

The Easiest and quickest way would be to go and buy a HDD DVD recorder with the inputs you need. I got mine for less than £180 nearly a year ago, and I still use it now, just for recording from the TV.

One useful Gadget.

 

[bberson]

Basically, I want to convert my old VHS tapes of my daughters growing up to DVD. Currently, I have a 1.6 pentium 4 running XP Home with 512 MB of DDR memory. I bought the Pinnacle Dazzle 80 video capture USB device a couple years ago and just now got around to setting it all up. It runs Studio 9 software.

You've got lots of options...

One of the niftiest would be to buy a cheap Firewire card if you don't already have one, if you have access to a camcorder that features NTSC-Firewire (or iLink or IEEE 1394, all different names for the same friggin' interface) pass-through. This gets you the video in high-quality DV format where it's easily editable by many packages including Pinnacle's Studio 9.

Or you can pull the stunt that I did. I have a ReplayTV unit. I fed the VHS video onto the ReplayTV, then downloaded the resulting MPEG2 files via the ReplayTV's Ethernet connection and burned them to DVD.

I'll second the suggestion of a recent vintage Hauppauge capture card or well-respected equivalent, but I will argue for the importance of at least some CPU speed because the PCI card does need some help during the encoding process. An antiquated PC may not be able to keep up.

And as someone mentioned the DVDR units are coming down in price. You could always buy one, convert all your stuff and then sell it on eBay when you are done to make back some of what you spent. Or make some money converting other people's stuff!

By the way, do yourself a favor and spend the extra bucks on good, archival quality DVDs and make sure you have a reliable DVD burner.

Oh, one more thing, make sure you're playing back from a good quality VHS machine too. There really is a huge difference in video quality among various VHS machines and you're only gonna do this once.

-Brad