vcr to dvd

[joecrab]

i was wondering if there is a software that will burn a movie from vcr to dvd (seven blows of the dragon). i did some searching but i am not too up on the lingo so i might have been reading what i needed and did not know it. i have dvd copy on my vaio but it takes about 5 hours to convert. i was wondering if there was something better out there

[jggimi]

Yes, there is software that can do some (if not all) of what you want. Most of the consumer video editing software tools can aid with video capture and can encode, author, and even burn DVDs. One example is Ulead VideoStudio -- consumer grade software that is relatively inexpensive, and available for download with a 30 day trial (www.ulead.com).

But you also need hardware -- lots of space on a hard drive, of course -- but also mandatory is the ability to capture analog video.

Capture requires either internal PC equipment (a PCI-slot video capture card, typically, or in some cases, a graphics card that includes video-in capability, such as ATI "all-in-wonder" cards), or outboard equipment such as a DV camcorder with a firewire (IEEE 1394) connection to your PC. Your viao, being a laptop, is unlikely to have any video-in capability, and unlikely to be able to accept a PCI card. But, you may be able to use outboard equipment.

For much more information, see the sticky threads in the Capture Forum, and, if interested in using a DV camcorder for this purpose, you should see the sticky threads in the DV Forum.

[joecrab]

i have gigapocket. i put tv shows on my laptop all the time and videos too. i was looking for a FREE and faster way to burn them to dvd. i can do it with the hardware and software that i have, i was looking for faster. it takes about 5 hours to covert the video to put on dvd. it takes no time to burn it to the dvd (about 30 min)

[jggimi]

AFAIK, Sony Gigapocket is Sony proprietary hardware. Unfortunately, the specific technology has NOT been discussed on this forum, with the exception of one question in passing in this thread (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=49905&highlight=gigapocket).

The Capture Guide (http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/capture/start.html), (linked by a sticky thread in the Capture forum, and available from Doom9's Guide pages) discusses DV, Philips chipsets, BrookTree chipsets, and Connexant chipsets. If it's one of those, then yes, there is FREE software for editing and preparation. The guides here typically recommend either CCE or TMPGEnc for MPEG-2 encoding, neither of which are FREE. But there is at least one FREE encoder for MPEG-2, according to this post (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&postid=542305&highlight=free+AND+mpeg2+AND+encoder%2A#post542305).

Faster? That will depend upon the differences in processing steps done by Sony proprietary tools vs. the free tools. There's no way to answer the question without more knowledge of the Gigapocket software and hardware. For example, if MPEG-2 encoding is done in Gigapocket hardware rather than Gigapocket software -- unlikely, but possible -- you may find the other tools slower. But there's no way for me to answer that question without knowing a lot more about Gigapocket than I do right now, which is little more than the name.

[jggimi]

There is a circumvention for Gigapocket that uses the AviSynth filter DirectShowSource(). See http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=82988