VirtualDub Capture

[Rapidan]

After capturing several test AVi files I came to realize that the my Dazzle DVC100 USB capture device is just terrible. I switched back to an old ATI Rage All-In-Wonder card. While it only allows a 320 x 240 capture, the resulting video test captures looked super. Only a little sharpening is needed and other filters just seemed to do more harm than good. This is the best I have ever obtained.

Currently as I am posting this, the capture of a 182 minute VHS movie looks like it will reach 90GB or more. I have a 320 GB HD so there is plenty of room.

Here is my question...

How can I be sure that conversion and burning will fit on the DVD?

I use ConvertXtoDVD to convert and burn. My burner is a DL burner. Nero 7 seems to crash on any AVI file conversion process.

[LoRd_MuldeR]

You need to convert the captured AVI to a Video-DVD compliant MPEG-2 file first. Then use a DVD Authoring software to create the "VIDEO_TS" folder (IFO and VOB files). For the first step you could use Avidemux (which has a Video-DVD Wizard and lets you choose the target filesize) and for the second step you can use MuxMan. Final step is burning on DVD with your favorite Burn software.

[jggimi]

You may find our Analog Capture Guide helpful.

http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/capture/start.html

Chapter 8 covers encoding and authoring, though you may find the rest of it helpful, too.

[Rapidan]

First I want to thank everyone who offered some very good thoughts and ideas...your posts here and elsewhere were very helpful to me.

I finally realized that even my old ATI card was just not cutting it even though I obtained decent results, I knew it could be much better.

So I took a chance and for $20 I purchased the Kworld DVD Maker PCI card which uses the Conxant 23883 chip. The first thing I noted was the big improvement in video quality.

I tried to use many different capture programs, but the results were widely varied. VirtualDub unfortunately did not provide good results although that could be because of my lack of experience using it. There are so many options and settings in VirtualDub I do not know which to choose for better reults. Likewise many of the conversion programs gave different results...I wish I knew why.

So I finally found that using Pinnacle's Studio 10.7 worked very good and provided the quality I was looking for. This package seems very straight forward and it handles all of the capture, conversion, and burn functions. This is great for me and simplifies the process of saving VHS tapes to DVD...it even handles the double layer DVD's really easy too.

So that is where I am right now. I hope to study VirtualDub and some others more to see if I can find another combo that get's 'er done.

:thanks:

[FishTank]

if you want vhs2dvd, then the best option for you would have
been a hardware dvd recorder imho. you cant get any simpler
then that. vdub is my N°1 capture tool, but it can not capture
to mpeg. thats probably why you ran into such troubles.
if you want to capture from tv, its a pain in the butt to
change channels (or so i heard). i myself capture over composite
from my vcr. no matter if i capture a vhs tape or tv broadcast.
if i capture tv broadcast, i use the vcr's tuner as its superior
to the capture cards one.

i own a pinnacle capture card and the software i got with it (PMC4)
is the worst compiled peace of gargabe ive ever had to work with lol (or one of the top 5).
limited to resolutions of 352x576 even though the card supports
up to 720x576. crashes left and right. not possible to crop.
it has the ability to capture to divx, yet it creates 4gb avi files
for 90 minutes LOL!
i dont know pinnacle studio 10, but i cant believe its any better :P

im glad its working for you though :)