Analog/VHS capture

[sleeepr]

Anyone have suggesstions on minimum graphics card to make capture & conversion of VHS to DVD? I'm looking at a new build, don't anticipate extreme gaming, but want to convert a closet full of VHS tape to digital without losing my religion. Any suggestions appreciated.

TA

[SonicVanguard]

You could do a dedicated capture card but analog capture cards are getting few and far between as well as expensive. The ATI All-In-Wonder series have great capture abilities - that would be my personal choice. Or you could get a TV tuner card and capture via the coax line from the VCR.

Dave.

[sleeepr]

Thanks for the input ("input"??) Appreciate the reply. I've seen some negative reviews by users of the AIW 9800 - driver issues. The 9600 doesn't seem to receive as much flame, and it's less expensive as well.
TA

[roreydo]

I used an All In Wonder 9200 to capture over 30 VHS tapes. Before that I had a Winfast Deluxe. The key to a good capture is the VCR with a built in Time Base Corrector and an S-Video output. The JVC series VCRs are the best.

I bought my 9200 off eBay for $99 and it came with Pinnacle Studio 8. IMO it's the way to go!

Also check out these sites:

http://www.videohelp.com/
http://digitalfaq.com/

[TwoRails]

The AIW seriers are a good card and I love my 9800 pro. But since your main concern is for analog tape capture, I'll risk getting some flak and recommend searching out an old Asus GF3 V8200 Deluxe vid card.

I haven't looked for them in a while, but they were dirt cheap after their glory days.

The "why" part is that, while the AIW is great for capturing TV, time shifting, and all that jazz, both my Asus capture cards did a better job of capturing tapes. They were more forgiving and didn't catch all the skips, flutters and flaws in some older tapes. The AIW does good on tapes in good shape, however.

HTH

TwoRails

[SonicVanguard]

The "why" part is that, while the AIW is great for capturing TV, time shifting, and all that jazz, both my Asus capture cards did a better job of capturing tapes. They were more forgiving and didn't catch all the skips, flutters and flaws in some older tapes. The AIW does good on tapes in good shape, however.
Okay...that just doen't make any sense to me. I'm not doubting you, but I think it's not due to the cards quality, but rather it's lack of quality. Analog capture is a what you see is what you get medium - if it's there, it will be captured. But some capture cards are not capable of full screen, full motion capture. So the reduced resolution and reduced frame rate may explain why anomalies that are present on a tape were not captured.

Dave.

[bailey]

I use the ati all in wonder card, and play my vhs tapes with the rf output feeding the tv tunner oh the aiw, and capture the video to a file, the only problem I have now it to turn that file into a dvd, no problem playing it on the computer at any time but to render it to the nero dvd burning operation i have not worked out yet.

[piasabird]

If you are going to do a capture of of VHS there are probably many ways to do it. One suggestion I am thinking of is just buying a recordable VCR/DVD Recordable unit with no computer attached. This may be the most economical method.

If you have to use the comptuter you may want to invest in the type of TV Tuner Card that is required to run MS Media Center Edition with an Encoder built into the hardware of the TV Tuner Card.

Some DVD Players for the TV support different types of video like MPEG2 and others like VCD or whatever. A lot depends on the video types the DVD player will support that you want to play it on.

[SonicVanguard]

I use the ati all in wonder card, and play my vhs tapes with the rf output feeding the tv tunner oh the aiw, and capture the video to a file, the only problem I have now it to turn that file into a dvd, no problem playing it on the computer at any time but to render it to the nero dvd burning operation i have not worked out yet.
Those files need to be in MPEG-2 format to be DVD compliant. If you have a full version of Nero 6 you might still be able to do it without making the conversion. If your copy came with NeroVision Express 2, just select that you'd like to make a DVD and import the video files. Once you've made your menu and all that, hit burn - NeroVision Express 2 can convert the files for you on the fly.

Dave.

[TwoRails]

Okay...that just doen't make any sense to me. I'm not doubting you, but I think it's not due to the cards quality, but rather it's lack of quality. Analog capture is a what you see is what you get medium - if it's there, it will be captured. But some capture cards are not capable of full screen, full motion capture. So the reduced resolution and reduced frame rate may explain why anomalies that are present on a tape were not captured...Yes, I understand what your are saying, and that's why a lot of smaller TVs look sharper than larger CRT TVs. However, I don't believe it's due to the quality of the card. The Asus 8200 Deluxe was / is a premium card and captures in real time at various sizes including MPEG1 to 704X480 and formats from AVI to YUV 4:2:2 and 4:2:0 (other than that being a DVD format, I couldn't tell you what it means, but I know you know :) )

To try to make more sense: Different render engines can give widely different end results using the same souce clip. (sorry if I'm not using all the right / professional words in this post.) That's why TMPGEnc is so popular here and why I got it (based on other forum members recommendations). It easily takes twice as long as other methods, but the quality difference is notable.

I don't know why there seems to be a difference between my 9800 versus the 8200 (and I'm Not knocking my 9800!). Maybe the 9800 is a more exact duplicate. Maybe the 8200's software has better correction algorithms to take out the grain / salt-n-pepper. Maybe the 8200 carries over the last frame if it detects a bad / garbled frame. I don't know and don't pretend to.

If / when I ever put the 8200 Deluxe into another box, I'll do a comparison. If fact, my next spare parts build will have that card in it.

Hope I made more sense this time.

TwoRails

[TwoRails]

I use the ati all in wonder card, and play my vhs tapes with the rf output feeding the tv tunner oh the aiw, and capture the video to a file, the only problem I have now it to turn that file into a dvd, no problem playing it on the computer at any time but to render it to the nero dvd burning operation i have not worked out yet.If I'm reading your post right, bailey, here's what you need to do (it's kinda convoluted):

First, you need to open up ATI's "Media Library." If you've never run it before, be carefull as it tries to log ALL your mulitmedia files. If you have hundreds or thousands, it is pretty messy. I aborted that operation.

Then, just have ML find the vid files you want by pointing it to only that directory the files are in. Then, when you found the file(s) you want, you have to covert ATI's proprietary VCR format to MPG.

The new MPG file is *not* DVD compliant. Some programs, like Nero 6, will take it without any messages; I assume it does the conversion transparent to the user. Other programs, like the authoring program DVDlabs, gives you a warning that the file is not compliant. You'll need to pick a less compliant option or render the file with something like TMPGEnc.

HTH

TwoRails

[Magma Music]

I use the Pinnacle Studio Deluxe (*with 'blue Box'.. i.e. break out box) with an AMD XP 2400, 500mb RAM and latest NVidia graphics card.
Does a great job of converting camcorder analog, VCR analog, S-Video or Digital video via Firewire inputs... never had a dropped frame and exports to all media formats quickly, cleanly and efficently.
Super colours and detail in rendered output... very happy with this product.
My only complaint is Pinnacle Studio 10 editing software does not have a 'cropping' feature available when working with analog renders.

[bailey]

thanks for the info, I am going to have to play with it some more sometime.
I just can't seam to find the time sence I retired (last month)
I only have two movies that I want to put on a dvd right now, so it should not be too big of a problem,