Copying Videos To Dvd

[alanh]

All,

I have tried a Nebula PCI card with video input with disappointing results. Particularly the picture quality.

The best results will come from a dedicated hardware MPEG2 encoder.

I want to be able to multisession the disk so I can record related but separate programs from different tapes onto the one DVD.

I have hundreds of VHS videos to copy sections from. I do not want to copy the originals onto a subsequent tape to assemble the program to be recorded on a DVD. There is a big quality drop.

Nearly all of the tapes have HiFi stereo sound tracks.

Has anyone had experience with any of the following

Sony DVDirect VRDMC5 which is basically a DVD burner which accepts signals from a wide variety of photographic equipment including stereo analog signals.

Panasonic DMR-EZ48V which contains a video recorder and a DVD burner

DVD maker

Any other products capable of copying a PAL video with HiFi stereo sound to DVD. Tuners are not required.

Thanks,

AlanH

[Shonky*]

What's bad about the picture quality using a capture card?

I capture SVideo from Foxtel and whilst not quite as good as Foxtel direct to the TV, it's certainly not "disappointing". I use a Kworld PCI card (has analogue tuner, digital tuner and direct video capture). It is raw capture only though - no hardware compression for the analogue tuner and SVideo/Composite.

Unless the PC is simply unable to compress the image in real time, a hardware encoder should be no better than a software encoder. Where you'll get improvements is the actual video sampling, the ADCs etc.

My experience with analog cards is generally the tuners are susceptible to interference but shouldn't affect you unless you are trying to use RF out from the video into the RF in of the capture card. My video capture is perfectly interference free.

Also why do you need multisession? Can't you just record the pieces to the PC, create the DVD and burn in one hit? Multisession potentially will break on some DVD players.

[alanh]

Shonky

Thanks for your response.

The results will be better using S Video because the chroma does not have to be removed from the luminance signal which as to be done in composite PAL signals.

The other issue which is not present when using Foxtel is the timing changes which occur due to the varying speed of the head over the tape. This has minute changes due to tape stretching around the head. This causes colour variations and horizontal picture movement. A time base corrector will remove a lot of this.

I agree that copying it all to a hard disk will eliminate the need for multisession, however the DVDirect has a single button to record, so to use it you set your tape in the correct position on the tape and push play and this record button and you are away. Simple! Have a look at the DVDirect link to see what I mean.

AlanH

[Basil1503559642]

Hi

Alan, i did all mine a couple of Years ago with Pinnacle Studio 9 PLUS,its marketed under another name now,Adobe? It works fine with a PCI capture card(S-Composite-FW). in the box. It can be as complicated or as simple as you like,i did DVD's with VCR content,SD movie camera and TV all mixed in together with CD music,menus and graphics added.

Major drawback is its very time consuming,i've now use a Panny 500 DVD/BD Burner ,its a lot easier but only has basic editing and no added features(Menus,Soundtracks etc) but gets the job done.

[DrP]

I have tried a Nebula PCI card with video input with disappointing results.

How are you capturing? What software?

The best results will be to use a frame based codec such as HUFFYUV, MJPEG, DV or some of the more recent types, all of which can be produced by the latest ffdshow tryout. For AVI capture software the best option at this point seems to be virtualdub - even so it still has issues. This method will give you a very very large AVI file, but then you run it through your DVD authoring tool / mpeg encoder and you should end up with quite reasonable quality.

As far as hardware MPEG2 encoder cards go, they all work, but there seems to be a common shortfall. All of them have very small rate averaging windows so when you use them in VBR mode and there is a spike up in the bitrate (to cope with image complexity etc) there must be a corresponding spike down very soon after and this can make visible quality problems. When using MPEG2 cards I crank their bitrate all the way up and then do a separate post capture encode pass as with an AVI file.

DVD recorders can do the job and are OK for simple use but I've found that doing it with the intermediate AVI file gives better and more controllable results. My Canopus bridge preserves more of the high frequency content of the picture than a lot of DVD recorders I've had experience with.

As usual, examples of all the above can be provided to demonstrate what I'm talking about.

Edited October 29, 2008 by DrP