Transferring VHS to DVD

[Kennoe55]

OK, I have all the necessary equipment (video capture device (Leadtek WinFast DTV2000 H), composite and audio cables, etc) to copy my VHS tapes to DVD. Only when I play the tapes using Nero or Windows Media Player, they are crap! The sound is out of sync, there is ghosting, variable frame rates and no colour. This is what is recorded, irrespective of the output format used (MPEG-2, AVI, etc). Only the sound is good, probably due to the use of the Xtreme Gamer card.

The same problem occurs with pre-recorded tapes and tapes from analogue cameras or recordings from the TV.

There does not seem to be any way of adjusting the quality of the input to improve it.

Any suggestions?

From reading the forum threads, it seem the only successful way is to use a DVD recorder. This is one expense too many!

Cheers

Steve

 

[95BlackGA]

I used iuVCR to convert before, and it had great settings to adjust, quality came out well.

 

[EricB]

I do it all of the time. you need a better capture card and a fast system for one.

I use windows media center, power vcr, gigapocket (my favorite), neo dvd etc. nero and movie maker sucks at making vhs recordings

 

[KurrentEweser]

It looks like on some of the those tapes you'll have to deal with macrovision. I know what to do, but won't discuss it here,

 

[CalcProgrammer1]

If you have an older PC, recording in any compressed format is a VERY BAD IDEA. Why? Because your CPU can't keep up and so you drop frames. I used to always record uncompressed AVI (enormous several gigabyte files) and then after convert them to MPEG when real-time encoding wasn't an issue. Pinnacle Studio has a Fast MPEG encoder that gets around this, so when I got Pinnacle 9 Plus, I was able to finally record straight from TV card. If you have a newer (dual core) PC it shouldn't be an issue though. It may be Macrovision, which scrambled signals to prevent VCR-to-VCR recording (think of it as analog DRM...which makes no sense because D is for digital but w/e). However, if you're recording home movies or straight from a camcorder, this isn't the case, only commercially sold tapes used Macrovision. Try some other codecs as well (DivX, XviD, .mov, etc).

 

[EricB]

It looks like on some of the those tapes you'll have to deal with macrovision. I know what to do, but won't discuss it here,

If you have an older PC, recording in any compressed format is a VERY BAD IDEA. Why? Because your CPU can't keep up and so you drop frames. I used to always record uncompressed AVI (enormous several gigabyte files) and then after convert them to MPEG when real-time encoding wasn't an issue. Pinnacle Studio has a Fast MPEG encoder that gets around this, so when I got Pinnacle 9 Plus, I was able to finally record straight from TV card. If you have a newer (dual core) PC it shouldn't be an issue though. It may be Macrovision, which scrambled signals to prevent VCR-to-VCR recording (think of it as analog DRM...which makes no sense because D is for digital but w/e). However, if you're recording home movies or straight from a camcorder, this isn't the case, only commercially sold tapes used Macrovision. Try some other codecs as well (DivX, XviD, .mov, etc).

if you can, get a toshiba vcr (dvd player to for that matter). they never put macrovsion in their stuff even when they were suppose to. you are allowed to make a backup of your vcr since it's isn't digital just you can records to mp3. some people think that it is but just read the digital millennium copying act. it refer to copying digital signals.

I use my sony hardware card with gigapocket as it automates the copying process.