Edit: I think I may have found a viable way of doing this, so I am going to share it with everyone.

1. Hardware: Get a capture card. I got a Pinnacle PC10Plus. I suggest you get an Asus TV Tuner Card.
2. For software: use Studio 8 which I think is the easiest to use and has the best quality. ( Downside - this b17ch takes hella long and it is prone to freezing. - version 8.10 fixes some of those problems, but it is not entirely gone. ) I do not recommend buying this because its not worth it. Use Kazaa ( I do not endorse the usage of illegal software )
3. Use your capture card and Studio 8 to extract the video from your VCR, for sound you have to rig some sort of wire so that the "audio out" from your VCR can connect to your microphone or line-in. In order to get your computer to hear and record the Microphone or Line-in you have to make sure the microphone is not muted, and the Studio 8 is set on recieving audio input from microphone or line-in.
4. Once you finished capturing the video, you can use Studio 8 to edit it, it is very useful for that job. Remeber to save often!!
5. Once you have finished all your editing, SAVE!
6. Now choose "Make movie" and choose "DVD", but instead of choosing "Burn to Disc", which has NEVER worked for me. Choose "burn image only" this will take a whole night, so keep your comp on at night when you are not using it.
7. In the morning you will get a "DVD" folder in your "auxiliary files", Now download the newest version of Nero and choose to burn a "DVD" then choose to burn an image to disc, then choose "DVD-video file"
8. Look in your "DVD" folder in "auxillary files" and you will find a "video_ts" folder, copy the content of that folder in the "video_ts" folder offered in Nero.
9. Then BURN BURN BURN BURN.

You're done, you will get a nice DVD movie for all your hard work. The quality is pretty good.

Required Hardware and Software:

Capture Card
Studio 8
Nero 6
At least 15GB of free hard drive space for a 1hr movie.
Fast processor and lots of ram. ( I have 2.4ghz p4 w/ 345 ram and 30gb HD )

Note: I spent a total of 3 days working on this and finally came up with this method. I hope it helps someone......


Original Message:

check out this site.

http://www.doom9.org/

usually some pretty good info on there.

chimmy

There are many guides out there that will take you step by step to accomplish your goal. In addition to http://www.doom9.org also check out http://www.dvdrhelp.com.

I just recently started getting into video editing, dvd ripping and the like. There is so much to learn.

Video capturing, editing & burning can be a long process depending on the quality of the source and quality of your equipment. Just have patience and take it step by step. I always say, a couple of hours learning will save you from many hours of frustration. Spend a couple of hours on each of those sites, read the guides, FAQ's and forums and everything will come together

There are tons of tutorials on dvdrhelp, that's where I always go to find out how to do something with video (ntsc>pal conversions, recording setttings etc. etc.)

Everything is step by step too. Really great site.

oh my god, i just spent 6 hours on pinnacle waiting for it to render my movie file. after that it F###CKEN hangs... I cannot believe this sh!!t... do not buy any pinnacle product.

lmao, sorry it's just happened to me with these "commercial" products. Do this, use the Pinnacle thingie ONLY for capturing the source. Use a different program to do the actual compressing. Something like VirtualDub or something similar. Chances are it won't crash and the added bonus that the end result might actually look a lot better than going entirely through the Pinnacle product. By default it probably uses some not so great settings which they probably do for your average consumer who might not really care about the quality.

If you got in on the Replay TV deal, you can use that to easily and quickly transfer a VCR to a DVD - use dvarchive to move the captured video to your computer. You can use Womble mpeg-vcr to edit the output, and then Ulead Movie Factory II to create the DVD, without re-encoding. I have transfered and edited movies using this approach.


wheel

Make sure you downloaded the update to Pinnacle 8 (that is if you have a legal copy), it did fix a lot of crashing/hanging bugs. And yes, video rendering is VERY CPU and disk intensive.

http://www.circuitcity.com/display_review....9&catoid=-10266

reviews here are mixed, appears many peoples computer freezes, lockups.
I always try to read Amazon reviews and CC before I buy anything.
I am not sure this is whay you bought :-)

its true, the capturing is fine. I dont have a problem with capturing. But it captures the file into a big 7.1GB file for a 1hr10mins movie. Now as I understand it, I need to convert it to MPEG2 before transfering onto DVD. Thats where the problem is. Studio 8 takes literally HOURS and HOURS to convert anything. I wouldnt be as bold to say that it reduces quality because I noticed the quality is actually alot better on studio than other progs. However, the 3 hours wait and hopes of it not hanging is too much for me to endure.

Nothing you can do about the rendering time, it's gonna take a LONG time no matter what you use. Only way to speed it up is to have some kind of hardware rendering (as opposed to software doing the rendering). But that costs money.

Arkayz -

That was my problem in the past when I tried to render the video on another machine. Frequently the sound and video did not sync. I stopped trying to do it and was going to leave the task undone until I upgraded to a more powerful machine.

When I got in on the Replay TV deal, I tried again. The results are great. The Replay unit does the rendering, and once the video is moved to your computer over the network, it is about a 10 minute time for burning assuming no editing is required.

Good luck - Now to start digitizing all these old videos!


wheel

Too bad I did not get in on the Replay TV deal. I have VHS tapes that I want to put on DVDs.

Hehe. I never knew why people were so crazy about the ReplayTV and Tivo. Now I know...

Man I wish I got in on it.

Edit: Added guide on original post.

Thanks for the guide. I started playing with this idea a while back hoping to convert some VHS-C and off air VHS tapes to DVD. The more I looked, the less I liked. You look at the project and go d@mn, there must be some simple way to do this. Alas, this is it. Kinda reminds me of my first DVD to SVCD conversions. Wake up 11 or 12 hours after starting it and discover that the program burped.

I'm probably going to be starting into this if I want to, or not. Keep us posted on your progress and if I discover some miracle program I'll let you know.

Just thought I'd bounce my idea off you all...

I also have a ton of VHS-C tapes that not only need editing, but I would also like to be put onto DVD.

My idea is to (rent / beg / borrow) a DVD recorder, hook it up to the VCR and make direct copies. Then take the DVD's to the computer to edit and burn the new edited movies (when I buy a DVD burner).

Does this sound plausible?

Haha.. honestly, that sounds VERY VERY VERY complicated.

You have to convert dvd into avi. <--- a complicated process in my opinion
Edit the avi.
Reformat it to DVD. <--- another complicated process that I struggled with.
Then burn to DVD.

However, I would imagine the quality to be better.

If you do it my way you do not need a DVD recorder, you just need a capture card and a burner.

Burners are so cheap nowadays you should definitely get one. Or buy a couple, sell it on ebay and make the money for the one you want.

BTW, to anyone who uses my guide, if you have any questions feel free to ask. I am no master, but I got the process down pretty good.

Edit: If you are going to try this, use a re-writable media. I have lost $10 worth of media in the process.

alurker, your frustration and learning adds to everyone's knowledge. Thanks for sharing your experiences and putting the process in an easy to read and humorous writeup.

5. Once you have finished all your editing, SAVE!
7. In the morning you will get a "DVD" folder...
I'm dying here :lol: But, it's so true.