How do I convert an old video (VHS type) to a DVD/CD?

Question

I have old baby videos that I want to convert to a DVD that can be viewed on a computer instead of popping a video in the VHS player which will be obsolete soon. What do I need?

Answer 1

Sure.

You need:

1. Computer (something fairly fast, and recent, with lots of hard drive space).

2. DVD burner (in the computer)

3. Analog TV Tuner device (USB or expansion card -- for the computer).  Make sure it's one that can handle RCA A/V inputs.

4. DVR software (usually, but not always included with a TV tuner device)

5. VCR -- preferably stereo

6. RCA dubbing cables -- preferably stereo

7. DVD blanks.

8. DVD authoring software.  There's a bunch of freeware out there that can convert MPEG to DVD-Video format.   You'll also need burning software that can do the DVD-Video format -- the most popular being Nero and Easy Media Creator.

9. (optional) Video enhancer.   These things are sometimes used to remove MacroVision artifacts, and aren't legal for that, but they can also clean up the signal from unprotected videos too.  Nice to have, but totally optional.

Set up the video tuner and DVD burner in the computer.  Install the DVR software and configure it to work with your video tuner.   Plug the Video Out and Audio Outputs from the VCR to the video tuner device.    You might need to select the video source from your DVR software.   Play something through the VCR through your connection to check that it's working.    

Insert the tape.   Choose your record settings.  You'll probably want the best quality your machine can handle.   If you set it too high, the recording will stutter as it will skip frames to compensate, too low, and the image will look fuzzy and chunky.   Set the aspect ratio and frame rate to match that for your desired DVD player (NTSC or PAL), or else your final product will look weird.  Encoding should be MPEG1 or MPEG2 for best compatibility.    

Press play on tape, and press pause.  This will give you time to fire up the PVR program to record.   Do so, and unpause the tape.   This will be a real-time recording, so will take as long as the tape will take when watching it.   You might want to leave and do something else.   Keep in mind that there's a slight delay between the VCR signal and the PVR's rendering, so start the recording BEFORE you unpause, and give it an extra second of record time before you stop it.

The end result should be a HUGE MPEG video file on your computer.   I did mention that you should have a lot of storage space on the hard drive, remember?

Feed this MPEG or MPEG2 file into a convertor like DivX2DVD.   This is an earlier freeware version of ConvertX2DVD.  Despite the name, even this earlier version of the program handles more than DivX format.

This will give you the contents of a Video_TS  folder as you'd find on a video DVD.   With some DVD playback programs like PowerDVD (bundled with many computer DVD drives and video cards), you can just select this folder and play it to test it out.

Insert a blank DVD, and fire up a burning program.    Specify a Video-DVD as your project type, and dump all the files you've just created into the Video_TS folder in your new project.  Burn it.   If you did it right, you've just wasted a day and copied VHS video to a DVD.

Answer 2

Excellent answer, almost better than I would have written it :-))

I have only a few little points I'd like to mention. The way how my predecessor wrote it is truly the simplest way. Do not expect extra high quality. It is given by physics, the quality of the disc will not be any better than the quality of the original.

If you get a "USB video converter" - it would do direct conversion (had you set it that way) into DVD format. It is quick, but you do not have many choices of improvement of the result. If the tape are truly some mementos you would like to keep AND you are computer geek (a small one at least like me:-) you might want to try a step by step manual method which will take more time, but the resulting quality might be a bit better....

So - here is how if you want that.

The basic philosophy of the approach is identical with the answer above, so only the little tricks:

After all connection you will capture.... Video tape resolution is 320x240. But if you set your capturing program to capture 320x240, the result is crappy. That is because each frame has only half of the info (VHS/Tv video is interlaced signal - two half-frames). So, set the capturing for 320x480 - it will look really funny - tall picture with stretched faces ect... Don't worry... that is the purpose.

Do not capture directly into mpg (either 1 or 2) - too much compression = too much work for computer = if you don't have really hight top machine, it will drop more frames = more quality loss... Plus - resulting mpg is already compressed, much less flexible for another work and editing. If you have extremely huge empty disc, you can try to capture raw (uncompressed) video, but I wouldn't advise it (you can try if you want). Otherwise chose mpeg4 compression - microsoft codec, resulting in AVI file, reasonable speed, big, but reasonable size of file, only a few dropped frames because it is not so computer demanding like the mpeg1 or 2 compression.

Now - you have that big file with funny look taller than wider.

Get free VirtualDub - program for editing AVI files + applying a lots of effects. You can cut out easily scenes you do not want in this handy small program. Then choose video - filter - resize - 320 width, 240 hight, mode BICUBIC.

Now before converting/resizing and saving... You need to decide one thing - do you really need DVD? I don't think so. Imagine - now you have some +- one-two GB file for some 1.5 hour movie (maybe even smaller). And for DVD, you will blow it up to 4.5 GB. Computer cannot ADD ionformation in it./ It is impossible. Imagine zooming a photograph. Depending on resolution of the original file, you will always sooner or later get to the point, where the pixels become ugly big. And this is similar. So I would not do DVD out of tape. It will still have the same quality as the tape (NEVER BETTER) but the files would be unnecessarily big. Does your DVD player have DivX logo? That is the fstest and easiest solution. If not, the second best option is SVCD if you've got good quality source tape. If the tape was crappy to start with, make only VCD - sufficient - VCD has exactly the same resolution as tape - 320x240.

Now, if your player plays DivX - set the VirtualDub in Video-compression - divX, choose quality (experiment a bit), convert, save as AVI - burn on CD disc (or DVD disc if too big file) - as a FILE burning, like you making backup. And you can play it on DVD player qhich plays DivX.

If your player does not support it, create again the AVI mpeg4 file, only now it will be resized into proper size (wider than taller) and then do the rest of the steps as described by my predecessor - converting into mpeg files. Just really - I would (and I did when I was converting my tapes) choose SVCD rather than DVD when using the avi2dvd or divx2dvd etc softwares. SVCD has very good quality of video (it is mpeg2 compression, same as DVD, but smaller resolution) and it is not blown up so much from the original. And you can burn it on both CD and DVD - whatever you want. Regular CD is about 40-60 min depending on bitrate quality setting during conversion. On DVD disc fits 6 times more = up to 6 hours! (while DVD format itself is usually 1-1.5 hours per disc).

DVD authoring software like DVD Lab Pro will create DVD disc out of SVCD mpg files and that will be playable on ALL DVD players.

have fun... and expect actually spending more than a day and the comp will be completelly blocked during that time... Get a good book for your sanity....

Johnny

Answer 3

If you have an analog (VHS) camcorder…

You need an analog converter, either internal card or external such as the dazzle. It's very easy to use and come with good software. You would hook your analog VHS camera or VCR to the analog converter, the dazzle and then hook the dazzle to your PC. The dazzle cost around 70.00 , but worth the money if you have a lot of VHS to tapes to convert.