I can find the hardware but was wondering if this was something that could be built by a hobbyist? Googled for a schematic with little luck, if it can't be built any recommendations on the hardware that goes between VHS player and Computer/DVD burner?
Thanks!
While you can use the PC and a video capture card like ATi TV Wonder series, setting it up can be a pain in the butt. The cheap internal hardware tended to rely on PC too much. External USB hardware is mostly crap because USB is very chatty, if you use other USB devices like keyboard and mouse, the captured video can stutter and drop frames. If you get external device, get the firewire version, they work much better than usb for high bandwidth use.
If you choose cheap internal video card or USB capture device, and if you have slow or bogged down system, you'll suffer a lot of dropped frames so a fast PC would be needed. For initial capture you need to use codec that has minimial CPU load like Mjpeg or Huffyuv to reduce the chance of dropped frames. Then run the captured video through MPEG encoder like TMPGEnc to convert to MPG2 (MPG2 is NOT free, you can use MPEG-1 instead for DVD but the quality suffers)
Finally you need a DVD authoring program to properly format the final video file, add in menu and such.
In the long run, it may be easier to pick up a decent stand alone DVD recorder and hook the VCR to it. Let the recorder burn the DVD automatically off the tape, then you can rip the burned DVD on your PC to edit out commercial breaks and unwanted scenes and author them for final DVD.
For more on VHS to DVD capturing, I would suggest an all free web site
There is nothing to "build". The VHS VCR will have a composite video output. Simply connect that to any PC video capture card and record using whatever software came with the card. Or connect the VCR directly to a DVD recorder.
You could in theory build a "black box" yourself, but you'd have to basically build a complete computer system to capture the video, process it, and burn to the DVD drive. This is essentially what a DVD recorder is.
Dave.
You want to build a video capture device? Have a look at what the Brooktree BT848 video capture chip does.
Whatever it is, it won't change the fact that DVDs are poor video quality, and VHS even worse, so the end result will be pretty damned bad.
Next thin you know, you'll be wanting to record them onto an HD format.
It's real simple. Feed your VHS composite out or S-VHS out to your video card's (must be a tuner type vid card usually) S-VHS or composite in. Record using a DiVX codec, and then all the mush that you have recorded on tape can then be burned onto a DVD. Then you need a DVD player that will play DiVX files/discs.
Nice chip, but not something a home "hobbyist" will be cranking out a full utilization of any time soon.
Stand-alone DVD recorders with digital tuners are now below $200. Wonder how good a transfer would be to go from the output of the VCR to input of DVD recorder?
I used to work in a studio and when we made any dubs, it was always through a Time Base Corrector and Proc amp. Was nice but very expensive, in those days at least (1980's).
If they are "commercial" VHS tapes (pre-recorded when you bought them), you will need one of those gadgets to remove the copyguard.
I don't know, but for a few dollars more, a good dual VHS/DVD player/burner with a copy function can be had.
-- Paul Hovnanian mailto:Paul@Hovnanian.com ------------------------------------------------------------------ Sleep is for wimps. Happy, healthy, well-rested wimps, but wimps nonetheless.
We got one on sale last week for $60. Excellent video quality.
Jim
ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.