Has anyone tried to convert some old VHS videos to MPG and, if so, how did you do it? I have some OLD videos of my wedding and of my children that I would like to preserve onto a CD and possibly play them back in my DVD player if possible. I'm afraid after all of these years, my tapes are going to break and I'll never see them again.

I just have the run of the mill hardware like your basic computer and VCR but haven't really tried to hook them up together. Any suggestions?

Get a cheap TV Tuner (The one I reviewed is rather cheap). It'll do mpeg, and with the new software and a fast computer, will do divx on the fly. Be forewarned that the only correctly sized resolution that it'll do with mpeg (or avi's) is 320 * 240, maybe a little higher with composite.

You can plug the TV tuner in, plug the VCR into the TV Tuner, and you'll be off

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paul@pleaseohpleasedontspamme.slcentral.com
A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems -- P. Erdos

Of course, if you can use S-VHS in as opposed to RCA, you'll get a much better picture quality, but other than the Radeon VIVO or an Elsa Gladiac + VIVO, I don't know of too many cards with SVHS in.

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"And knowing is half the battle!"

Asus deluxe line of cards support S-Vhs in and composite too. So, if you want good quality video capture, and anyone you know has an Asus, you can capture video till 704x480 resolution, and I've tried it with my geforce, and it works great!

After the capture, there are many software available that will convert your video to vcd format. In fact, software like easy CD creator will automatically convert your avi to VCD while burning. I would rather you took a high res Divx copy and burned that avi to CD. You will maintain good quality, and no wasted space

Btw, why're you banned from chatting?

Worst problem I've had with MPEG compression seems to be old staticy video. My solution is to copy the video onto mini-DV tape using the S-VHS video-in on my Canon Elura digital camcorder. The conversion to DV in a camcorder seems to clean up the video by magic. Then into the computer with the firewire (i-Link) connection. Then there are lots of software packages that compresses to MPEG but all of them seems to take forever even with a fast CPU. There is a new product out called CAMPeg from Mediostream.com which does the compression on the fly as the digital video is captured. If it works it will save a bundle of time and huge amounts of hard drive space. But it needs a digital video source so you would still need that interim stage through the camcorder or other DV recorder.

For a computer free solution, the Terrapin, which purports to be as simple to use as a VHS recorder, will import standard VHS, convert it to DV, compress it to MPEG and burn a video CD-R all in one shot. A hugely impressive trick, actually. But it *hates* noisy VHS so I have to copy the video first to the mini-DV camcorder (which again somehow magically cleans it up) then S-VHS the output to the Terapin. Low res full screen result with some heavy artifacting but it *does* play on the newer TV DVD players like GO-Video and Panasonic and the media *is* cheap. If the original wasn't all that great to start with the mini-DV enhancement might offset the heavy artifacting in the final disc enough to be a close wash. I'm not sure I really like this solution enough to recommend it but since I bought it I'm using it - at least now and then.

But wait a year and I think we will be able to buy a Macintosh G-4 that does the whole trick for us on real DVD discs at high res with simple to use bundled software and a built-in DVD burner. In the meantime get a digital camcorder with s-VHS in and firewire in-out and start copying your old VHS on mini-DV. Or try Panasonics mini-DV VCR (under $1,000 at B&H PhotoVideo) if you have a lot of old tapes to convert and don't want to wear out your camcorder. Simple VCR (VHS) to VCR (mini-DV) copy with that one and it has internal noise minimization features that clean up old video.

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CampfireDan

For reference, our review of the Terapin is located here.

yea when are they gonna have DVD burners that actually record real DVDs that can be played in any DVD player? If that starts getting into the affordable range I think CDs are gonna be slowly phased out.. but then again CDs are still good for music at least.. and there really isn't a big need to move to DVDs...

yea I've got a few VHS tapes of dragon ball I'd like to digitize. I've got the episodes from the start of the Cell game to when they kill cell and the majin buu saga to the end... plus all the movies... would be nice to put those on DVDs or CDs some time in the future...

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SystemLogic.net - Editor

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The new PowerMac G4s ship with SuperDrives, which are DVD-RW, I'm pretty sure. And I think they use media which is nekkid...that is to say, without a caddy. They have all the appropriate editing software there too. I'm sure you could use one of those.

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"And knowing is half the battle!"

Tom, I'm like 99% sure that the newer DVD-R's can play in a normal DVD player.

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ActiveTuning - Partner & Director Of Sales & Marketing

The discs may be able to, but the media itself depends on what kind of drive/kit you get. Most of the DVD-RAM and DVD-RW media I've seen is in caddies. You'd have to break the package open to get to the disc, and then it's not really rewriteable anymore...

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"And knowing is half the battle!"

I personally think that CD's should have been cady based since the beginning. It'd save a lot of scratches, even if it increased the size of storing things.

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paul@pleaseohpleasedontspamme.slcentral.com
A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems -- P. Erdos

Dude, I SO agree with that statement...that's one of the reasons I fought so hard against LS-120 advocates. I mean, come on...I don't give a damn if it's compatible with my old floppies, especially since you normally can't even boot from it anyway...

What's the one worst thing about floppies? The fact that they're so fragile! ZIPs are strides beyond floppies in durability...

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"And knowing is half the battle!"