CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

JamesAB · Posted: Tue Feb 08, 2011 7:04 am Post subject: VHS to DVD conversion via PC

I'd like to finally get rid of my VCR, but first I need to convert quite a few VHS tapes of home movies to digital and back them up on DVD.

After quite a bit of research, I convinced myself to spend approx $400 on a Canopus ADVC300 figuring after a couple of months I can sell it for a small loss on Ebay when I'm done. This solution is pricey but the Canopus should do a good job of cleaning up the signal and I won't have to worry about the audio being out of sync.

Okay. Here's the part where my convoluted brain makes a sharp left turn. There's a big selfish part of me that is looking for any excuse to buy a Lumagen Radiance XE.

What if I took the output of a VCR into a Radiance XE and then sent the HDMI output into a HDMI capture card on a PC?

So, would this work and would it give me a better end product than the Canopus solution?

Any ideas or suggestions to rein me in or push me over the edge?

Thanks,
James

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Tue Feb 08, 2011 7:08 am Post subject:

Are the VHS tapes ones that you made yourself?

JamesAB · Posted: Tue Feb 08, 2011 7:12 am Post subject:

Yes. They are all home made so macrovision shouldn't be an issue.

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Tue Feb 08, 2011 7:18 am Post subject:

cheapest way would be a Magnavox stand alone DVD recorder/PVR with hard drive.

http://www.target.com/Magnavox-HDD-Recorder-Black-MDR513H/dp/B003DPKOKK/ref=sc_qi_detaillink

JamesAB · Posted: Tue Feb 08, 2011 4:14 pm Post subject:

Thanks for the suggestion AnalogRocks.

I looked at that sort of thing, but I was thinking if I used a PC solution I'd have more flexibility for editing and adding chapter markers. I was also hoping to slightly improve the quality if possible. I know it's just VHS, but every bit would help.

ecrabb · Posted: Tue Feb 08, 2011 5:11 pm Post subject:

Jeremy's suggestion isn't all bad... In the case of a set-top box, you're doing exactly one A/D step and encoding directly to MPEG-2... Not a bad approach to maximize quality and get a copy as close to the original as possible. But, as you pointed out, it limits your options as far as editing or modifying the video in any other way.

In contrast, with the Canopus, you've got the A/D conversion converting to DV, then you're going to edit and if you do cuts-only editing, you'll have one more transcode from DV to MPEG-2 for DVD.

Even then, you're not really going to do any better than the Canopus. You're somewhat limited by the DV codec and it's low chroma resolution, but even that is far superior to what you'll be able to pull off an old VHS tape. Probably most important is that you use a good VCR, preferably one with time-base correction, and good tracking controls (or excellent auto-tracking). Fortunately, VHS VCR's - even the really good ones - are worth little or nothing these days.

To me, it would come down to how many tapes I had to do. 10 or 15 hours... The Canopus would be fine, and I could suck it up for a long weekend of capturing, editing, encoding, and burning, because you're probably looking at a 2:1 or 3:1 relationship between hours of source material and hours to capture, encode and burn. So, if I had 30 or 40 hours... Then, I might look at something more turn-key to keep it from turning into one of those "maybe I'll get around to that some time" projects.

As far as the Lumagen and HDMI capture, that would be massive overkill to the nth degree to capture VHS and would accomplish nothing but making the process more complicated.

SC