CONVERTING VIDEO TO DVD

[admin_exported]

Can anyone advise me what the best way of convering vhs video to dvd formats?

Is there an "all in one "box that can do all this i.e take both vhs and dvd's to record?

Regards

 

[John Duncan]

Are they home videos or commercial ones?

 

[Anonymous]

Commercial.

 

[chebby]

DAVEYH:Is there an "all in one "box that can do all this i.e take both vhs and dvd's to record?

Regards

Yep. We had one like this (but from an earlier range) until a couple of months ago....

http://www.panasonic.co.uk/html/en_GB/Products/DVD+%26+Video/DVD+Recorders/DMR-EX98V/Overview/618127/index.html

Worked fine.

We no longer have any VHS tapes left so we sold it.

 

[Anonymous]

The DMREX98 may not record all commercial videos as the onboard macrovision is there to stop copying of pre-recorded tapes.

 

[chebby]

We never had a problem with our older Panasonic version. Maybe it did not have that or maybe the only VHS tapes we archived to DVD didn't have any coding on them.

The only commercial ones tended to be fairly obscure stuff that never made it to DVD otherwise we simply bought the commercial DVD for quality reasons. No point in archiving stuff from VHS that you can pick up from amazon for a fiver new in DVD quality.

Otherwise I archived across stuff I had recorded off-air that was never likely to be repeated.

 

[8009514]

Toffees fan:The DMREX98 may not record all commercial videos as the onboard macrovision is there to stop copying of pre-recorded tapes.

This can indeed be a problem. Knocking around somewhere in my house is a 'special' scart lead which overcame this issue. Will try and locate it and see if I can give any details about it.

 

[fatboyslimfast]

Perfect point there chebby. I use a standalone Sony VHS recorded scart'd to a no-brand DVD recorder...but it does only work on non-macrovision tapes. The one where I was in a revue show aged 12 was hilarious, but I digress...

But generally, most things that are macrovision-encoded are available on the bay of e for less money than the hassle of converting. And you'd get a damn site better end result too...

 

[Anonymous]

Quote: We never had a problem with our older Panasonic version. Maybe it
did not have that or maybe the only VHS tapes we archived to DVD didn't
have any coding on them.

The only commercial ones tended to be
fairly obscure stuff that never made it to DVD otherwise we simply
bought the commercial DVD for quality reasons. No point in archiving
stuff from VHS that you can pick up from amazon for a fiver new in DVD
quality.

Otherwise I archived across stuff I had recorded off-air that was never likely to be repeated.

Yeah, I would agree with your points. They are a convenient way of archiving rare footage.

 

[John Duncan]

Toffees fan:The DMREX98 may not record all commercial videos as the onboard macrovision is there to stop copying of pre-recorded tapes.

That was my point too. I would personally try to buy them off eBay, it'd probably be cheaper (and certainly better quality).

 

[8009514]

8009514:

Toffees fan:The DMREX98 may not record all commercial videos as the onboard macrovision is there to stop copying of pre-recorded tapes.

This can indeed be a problem. Knocking around somewhere in my house is a 'special' scart lead which overcame this issue. Will try and locate it and see if I can give any details about it.

That was lucky, one of the first leads I came to. Its a scart lead with label on it saying MACRO MASTER Video Stabiliser.

A google search should find it ok for you. Used it quite a lot a while ago. No videos left now. Worked just fine.

Quick ebay search has found a unit which does same thing as my scart lead. Look under 'video stabiliser'. (I'm not good at linky things

 

[ultraminiature]

Any DVD recorder hooked up to a VHS (S-VHS) deck with SCART to RCA phono cable will do the job. S-vdeo connectors are better and Super-VHS decks are very cheap and can be resold in month or so at little loss. This might be better than using composite video from an older VHS deck.

Some hard drive recorders also offer some editing of the imported video before making a DVD.

Although this is the fastest way to convert far more can be done if using a video capture card on a computer. The tools to edit out unwanted material as well as to add title and A/B roll over are more flexible. For example I created individual DVDs where I recorded events involving other family members or friends, cutting out a few seconds here and there and making a very short video (20-30 minutes) onto a DVD.

Instead of a stack of DVDs consider an external hard drive or media player for storage and playback and don't skip on a back up for them. Tapes convert to MPG (using Nero or Hauppauge WinTV cards) at 2-4Gb per hour (compared to Freeview recordings at 800-1200Mbit per hour). Options to compress the video directly to MPG to fit a 3 hour tape to a DVD may result in a lost of picture quality. I have a 2hr 23min S-VHS recording that is 8.29Gb. If this was commerical then a second hand DVD would be better, a lot less effort and perhaps under a fiver.

 

[professorhat]

ultraminiature - you do seem to just be responding to very old threads. No offence, but I don't this a great use of your time - I very much doubt the OP is still checking this post 2 years on in hope of a reply...