VHS to DVD software

[Greenwich_Man]

Hope this is the right forum for this...

I'm looking for PC software to convert my old VHS films to DVD

I tried running a lead from my VHS player to my DVD recorder - but it wont do most of my bought films 'cos of copyright.

Do you know of software I could use to get over this please? I don't want to have to purchase all the films on DVD

I've seen stuff advertised in the papers - not sure it would do this for me

Thanks for your help folks

 

[John Duncan]

If it's advertised in the papers, it's probably legal, and therefore of no use to you. Commercial VHS films are encoded with a copy protection mechanism called Macrovision - there are hardware solutions to this, but frankly I wouldn't bother, since even if you could resolve it, you have to do it in real time and the resultant copy will be extremely poor quality - scour play.com, Amazon and eBay for DVD replacements.

 

[chebby]

Far easier to use something like this...

http://www.panasonic.co.uk/html/en_GB/618127/index.html?view=&colourVar=DMR-EX98VEBS

They are about £500 but you can get one without the 250gb HDD for £250

(I am using a similar Panasonic model from last year's range. It actually improves the picture during the transfer.)

Oh yes, it also has a good built in Freeview Tuner so you can get Freeview radio though your hi-fi without having to turn your Freeview TV on, and (of course) be able to watch one freeview channel and record another. Has SD card input so you can view photographs and record them onto DVD if that is your thing.

I agree with John that it is pointless moving over old VHS movies. The DVDs are cheap and far superior. The stuff I have copied is material I recorded onto VHS myself (TV documentary series etc) that cannot be replaced because it will never be available on DVD.

 

[Greenwich_Man]

Sorry not been around for a few days - a virus thing...

Thanks for help folks - I'll need to find out from the wife how many films she wants before I choose the route

 

[Anonymous]

I agree that transeferring movies that are available on DVD is slightly pointless (if the DVDs are reasonably priced), check play.com, hmv.co.uk, asda, and of course the great ebay! I usually go through a load of different websites and then just buy from the cheapest when it comes to DVDs

Transferring is invaluable where DVDs haven't been released of certain VHS stuff, home movies of TV broadcasts you want to keep because they'll probably never ever be shown again!

The way I've gone about this the few times I've done this is with a good VHS player, a capture card (Hauppauge are good in my opinion), and some software to convert to DVD (TMPGEnc is my favourite choice)

Best to capture to uncompressed AVI if you want to try doing some cleaning up. Bundled software can probably record to something that can go straight to DVD if you're not fussed. TMPGEnc has some amazing filters etc that you can use to tweak as much out of the VHS picture as possible.

But after the initial expenditure on a capture card, the time and effort capturing the VHS, you'll probably wonder... is it worth it?