I have a bunch of old VHS tapes I want to archive to high-quality digital. My PC (XP SP2 OS) doesn't have a card that does analog-to-digital video conversion, and I don't want to add one, so I would be using an outboard converter and feed the digital result into the computer via USB for editing and burning to DVD. What's the best consumer hardware and software for all this? I'm mainly concerned at this point with getting the best quality digital transfer. (FYI I already have fairly high-quality VHS playback device w/S-video out, so I need recommendations for the conversion hardware and downstream software only.) Would prefer to spend less than $300.

hardware vise i would probably get something out of this:
http://www.canopus.us/US/products/ADVC_sel...c_selection.asp

(advc55 is external box, but it seems it does need a firewire connector on your pc.) ($230)

yes, there is s-video in
http://www.canopus.us/US/products/ADVC55/PI_B_ADVC55_01.jpg

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software, this will probably fit in nicely:

http://www.tmpg-inc.com/product/tdap.html ($100)

ok, so it is $330

Thanks! The slightly cheaper ADVC50 PCI card version features 'locked audio and video synch', -- how important is this, and does it mean that I can't edit the soundtrack separately after capturing the videotape to digital?

I had pretty good results with this: Pinnacle Moviebox USB

The "Studio" software is pretty good, the MPEG2 encoder chip takes the load off your CPU, and it's just over a hundred bucks on eBay. That's good value.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DV
thats not really important for home use, in any case you can strip the audio and do whatever you want with it (with proper editing software, my workflow is usually 1. edit multitrack audio in premiere together with picture, 2. export stereo pairs (so if i have 8 channels thats 4 files), 3. mixdown in audition, 4. import mix back to premiere and finalize audio+video to dvd or whatever.).

dv isn't the best way to go to DVD, but it is the cheapest for the best quality (and fewer syncronization issues). and 13gb/hr isn't too terribly bad considering alternatives.

as for a dvd authoring program DVDlab was a decent one a while back if you want to avoid the big boys, my 10 minutes with it (remuxing a single video) were simple and painless. not sure if the trial is as uncrippled as it once was, however.

my fave is DVD Studio Pro (mac), but then again i use it at the place i freelance, who owns it

[quote=krabapple,Oct 19 2005, 11:33 AM]
I have a bunch of old VHS tapes I want to archive to high-quality digital.

I bought, for about $370, the Pioneer DVR-520H-S and found that its A/D convertor was surprisingly good considering the price. Complicated machine with steep learning curve, very limited editing ability, but very good results from S-VHS. You can use the the DVD produced for transfer to your computer and appropriate editing software.

the best and cheapest way would be to get a capture-card(or tv-card) [philips adc(saa713x) is something i can say works very good], use vdub or virtualvcr to cap, and encode with usual mpeg encoders.
(you have freeware encoders too. find them on doom9 forum).

so total cost would be about 30-40$ for a card.

i don't understand the need not to open the pc case to add a card: if you get mpeg2 or dv cap systems you'll be paying more and getting less (less quality of capped content).
also, i just got a vhs tape from a person that didn't had luck in converting it via dv-camcorder or mpeg2 card, so stories about dv systems being bullet proof don't seem to hold water: also, canopus is notorious for poor conversion(screen goes black on poor tape portions) of vhs, so they now added tbc to advc300. but look at the price of that. i have heard simillar stories about pinnacle dv solutions and vhs capping (loss of sync).

i feel a cheap card is a most robust way to cap. (offcourse, cheap tv-card and onboard audio(eg AC97 codec) may sometimes(depending on the onboard audio manufacturer) result in sync issues, but pci sound cards are real cheap these days. no need to be afraid of async on cheap card anymore than on dv or mpeg2 solutions)

the easiest way to do this, is(offcourse) a stadalone dvd-recorder.
as said here
http://episteme.arstechnica.com/groupee/fo...31#279002116731

ADVC boxes will add clicks if the tape is stretched a tad. video doesn't always go at 25fps or 30/1.001... it can vary up to (IIRC) 5% either way before most TVs spit out crap instead of an image. a DV box will do that too, but a digital video must have a constant frame rate (at least DV and anything in AVI), so the only way to keep things accurate is to add blank or remove samples in the audio. if it did dynamic resampling it would help, but that'd kick the cost up a notch.

that said, clicks and pops are easy to remove, and often without losing much actual quality (depends how much was there in the first place). but if the audio is really clicky, i recommend capturing the audio separately and stretching it in an audio app to match the video.

aha..one more reason to avoid advc.
<wink>

>if it did dynamic resampling it would help, but that'd kick the cost up a notch.

virtualvcr and vdub-sync do that.
for free.

nice to see you again.