I have a few VHS videos that need putting on DVD.

 

I'm guessing some of Teh Possie have done it in the past. What methods were used?

 

I have a VCR and a couple of analogue TV cards. The most interesting is a Hauppauge PVR-250 which has a hardware MPEG 2 encoder on it, seems to give decent quality too.

 

Would it be best to just stick that in a linux box, and run a script to have VLC dump it all to an .mpg file? Sounds like the easiest option.

I've never done it myself, but I'm sure someone will be along soon to answer your query.

There may (not) be a financial incentive Nigel.

I've done a few before. It's always a curious one as the output from the PVR is interlaced, and is an MPEG transport stream. I've never tried dumping it direct to DVD mind you, might work fine there. I've always ended up using the PVR to record the video, then converting it to an AVI whilst using a de-interlace filter in VirtualDub. But then, I wanted the PC version as well as the DVD version of the stuff and the interlacing in the video annoyed me.

Interlacing/deinterlacing is probably going to be the issue once it's captured, though I do have a feeling that the PVR-250 card can capture progressive. I'll have to check.

Granted I've only tried it with my PVR-150, and that was limited to interlaced capturing.

Most recently I used a Panasonic HDD/DVD recorder. Scart from the video player and record either to a RAM DVD to edit on my computer (the recording format is basically MPEG2) or to the recorder's HDD from where it can be edited and written to a recordable DVD with the onboard Panasonic editor/burner.

I've done the same with capture cards in the past, an ATI AIW x800 and a Hollywood+ thing, but the results weren't as good. Then again, these weren't especially good cards.

Edit: it occurs to me that if you videos are commercial, then my recorder method would probably fail as Panasonic (at least) pays close attention to nonsense like macrovision.

Not commercial, old camcorder videos.

 

My last attempt ages ago with a holiday video was with a software TV card and the results were an interlaced mess. Hopefully this attempt will be better, especially since they're not my videos!

I may (not) give a damn Anthony.