How to transfer VHS or Mini-DV to DVD

Hey, I'm stumped.

How does one go about burning/editing video from videotape, VHS or Mini-DV, to a DVD disc via a PC?

I currently do not have a DVD-RW drive (CR-RW I have, but that doesn't help me), and do not have any RCA-type jacks in the back of my PC tower.

I know I'll have to buy a DVD-RW, but how does one go about installing RCA-type jacks into your PC? Also, what video-editing software do you recommend?

Any/all help greatly appreciated! Descriptions of your direct experiences and setups would be great!

TIA!

Try here: web page
or here: web page
for some very good info. At Doom9.org (first link), go to guides, it will step you through the process. You'll need a capture card or device, or a video card like ATI's All-In-Wonder that has capture functions built in. As far as Editing software, I use Vegas (recently re-named Sony Vegas), but Adobe Premiere is good too. A lot of capture cards come with software that is sufficient for most home uses. Pinnacle makes a line of cards that come with "Studio" software, not bad. The new version of Ahead Nero comes with "Vision Express", easy to use. And if you want real easy, Win XP has Windows Movie Maker, but you'll still need a burning program like Nero.
Hope that helps a little. You've got a lot of reading to do!
Rob

How much you willing to spend? For $1100 you can get an eMac with a Superdrive and award winning iMovie and iDVD software. Just keep that in mind as you start into this project.

You say VHS or Mini-DV. Do you have a Digital Camcorder? Does it happen to have analog in? If so you're in business. Record your VHS tapes onto MiniDV and then transfer your MiniDV stuff onto the computer using some editing software. I hear Pinnacle is good. Then you'll need some DVD authoring software. I think Pinnacle does DVD authoring as well. This all assumes your machine has Firewire

If you don't have a digital camcorder and you don't want to buy one you'll need to get a video capture board of some type. The advantage of this is you don't have to go through the extra step of recording in the camcorder. The disadvantage is they cost as much as a camcorder.

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You say VHS or Mini-DV. Do you have a Digital Camcorder? Does it happen to have analog in?

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I do! I have a pretty bitchin' Sony Mini-DV camcorder, I got for my birthday last summer.

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Record your VHS tapes onto MiniDV and then transfer your MiniDV stuff onto the computer using some editing software.

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I guess that means I'm gonna have to pull out the Sony's box and figure out how to hook it up to my computer, huh? I know it came with some cables and software, but never got around to loading it up.

Thanks for pointing me in the right directions, guys, I'll look into it and report back!

Hi Ron,

Might try this link and see if this is what your lookin' for:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-Details.asp?EdpNo=579052&sku=A46-4020

I'd stay away from USB video devices, 1.1 or 2.0. USB is nice and all, but Firewire just seems to have some magic ingredient in it that makes it work that much better with video, in my experience at least.

For copying from VHS I've found USB devices to be O.K. For a digital format, I agree Firewire is better. Found this link also:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-Details.asp?EdpNo=343783&sku=I136-1006

For video capture from VHS, I've found that the ReplayTV produces MUCH better quality files than any outboard capture device I've used. Getting the files off of the Replay and onto the PC isn't quick, but if quality matters, it's worth the wait.

another option might be HP's new DC3000, which is an external DVD writer with built-in RCA inputs. DISCLAIMER: I work for HP, and I haven't acutally used the product.

Well, as it turns out, the Pixela software provided with my Sony Digicam only is for downloading of static images off the Digicam's MemoryStick.

So, I think I'm going to have to try that HP DC3000 Movie Writer.

Dazzle Video Creator works well. It has an externel component for hooking up the RCA jacks and a PCI card that goes into the PC itself.

The software works well enough once you become used to it. We use it all the time for legal presentations in court.

You can input and output to/from just about anything with very good results. It does get to be a pain though when editing and re-assembling, you need a real hot PC with tons of memory and disk space.

Al

Ron,

If you use the Movie Writer you're throwing in a lot of processor overhead so to speak. You just need some video software that can capture via Firewire (Or, since it's a Sony, probably iLink--a tweaked version of FireWire). Might want to search around on the internet a bit. If you give me the model number of the camera I can help. This way the video is digital in the camera, and transfers digitally onto the computer, like ripping a CD.

If you use a Movie Writer than the camera converts to analog, sends it over RCA, and then the computer converts back to digital--like recording a CD to your computer by hooking up a CD player via the headphone outlet.

Ryan,

I've got a Sony Digital HandyCam DCR-PC101.

I've got a Dell 8200 1.8GHz at work, and an antiquated Gateway 450Mhz at home.

I'm not quite sure what FireWire entails, but I know I ain't got it.

Thanks for any/all help!

Oooooooh... You need Firewire! You can add it via a PCI card. You'll then plug 1 end of the Firewire in your computer and another end into your camera and you'll be able to stream the video digitally into your computer. You can even control the camera from the computer and some software even splits your video up into clips according to when you paused the camera. Right now you've got the equivalent of having a digital (still) camera without a way to do anything with the pics except direct print them.

Firewire makes video editing (dare I say it) fun and easy. Suddenly you're watching your home movies because you've edited them so they're actually fun to watch.

I gotta plug the Mac again: You could get a Firewire card for your computer for probably less then $100 or you could get a Mac with iMovie and iDVD and Firewire and a nice big HD for editing movies for just over $1000. As far as consumer level video apps go iMovie can't be beat although I understand Pinnacle is pretty good.

Ryan,

Okay, you've got my full attention.

Couple more questions:

1) I just did a quick check over at Outpost.com, and the choices are overwhemling. Can you recommend a few?

2) I'm going to need a DVD-RW drive too, right?

3) Is my Gateway 450Mhz, running XP, going to pull through? As I'd rather do the video editing at home and not at work?

Thanks! I'm sure I'll have more questions though!

Ok,

I have captured tons of hours of video on celeron/p3/p4 computers. Hopefully, I know a little of what I'm talking about.

Gateway 450 may or may not do this. I assume this is a 450 pentium3... right? If p2, forget it. Ram... 256 may work. I have always used 512 at least. Hard drive... you'll need about 13gig per hour of video captured. This will be doubled when you go to render a dvd disk also, oh yeah, add another 4 gig or so to that total. So, 1 hour equals 13+13+4=30 gigs approx. The pc speed has to be fast enough to capture w/o dropping frames. After that even a slower pc will USUALLY enevtually encode/transcode/burn a disk.

I have always used pinnacle studio 8. If you look around, you can find it bundled with a decent firewire card for about $100 or so (retail). I have a sony handicam with ilink. It plugs right up with no problem. The nice thing about pinnacle is that it captures/edits/encodes/burns. I have had some SERIOUS problems with burning and capturing with different softwares. But, you will need the dvd burning "infrastructure". This typically get loaded if you load the software that comes with the dvd drive.

On a p4 1.8GHz with 512 ram and a good hard drive, expect it to take about 1.5 hours to encode a 1 hour movie. It will then take another hour or so to compile the disk. Then another 30-60 minutes to burn the disk (depending on dvd burner speed).

I have one system: p3 1.2Ghz with 512 ram, 80 gig 7200rpm raid drives, xp pro, 512 ram. It's about 50% slower than the p4. Encoding is very CPU dependant.

The software I had to load to make this work:
dvd burning software that came with my drive (nero)
pinnacle
NOTE: I do NOT use the nero software. It is nero that had problems with pinnacle. Also, windows xp movie maker had capture problems as well.

I did a lot of research and it seems that capturing uses codecs (some type of compression algorithm). These things appear to be copyrighted... so the only way to get a real good one (easily) is to just go buy some software with it in there. If capturing does not yield 13gigs of data per hour, you have done something wrong.

Pinnacle is really nice stuff. Be SURE to download the latest update from their web site. It sped up my render speed and helped with some encoding lockup problems that I had.

Which drive...

When I bought mine, I researched a lot at doom9.org and other similar sites. The toshiba was the hottest thing going then. There is dvd-r(w) and dvd+r(w). I got a -r since the +r was still in first generation teeth-cutting problems. There are some important differences, but I have forgotten what they are (some help I turned out to be eh!).

If you're planning on using a 450 machine, I would go with an internal drive. ANY 450 speed pc will have enough problems writing dvd w/o the added overhead of controlling some external device.

Standard troubleshooting advice applies... turn off any unused processes/etc. You'll need all the ram/cpu cycles you can get.

Have fun!

Listen to turbodog. I've only done any serious video stuff on the Mac. I tried once on the PC but the Firewire wasn't working.

The computer's cpu speed is not as much of an issue as the hard drive speed. MiniDV transfers at roughly 3.6 Mb/sec (13 gigs an hour as turbodog already specified) To transfer that much data that quickly, you'll need a fast hard drive that is capable of SUSTAINED (not peak) transfer rate of at least that much, and 20+MB/sec is probably better, and that usually means a drive speed of 7200 rpm or faster. I would also recommend pinnacle studio software, but do NOT use the preview capture if your computer is not way above spec. It's actually more cpu intensive than full capture. Go to your hardware settings and turn of DMA for your capture drive, that should help a lot, and try not to run too many programs while caputuring.

Also, check out this site.

www.videoguys.com

The easiest way to transfer from VHS/videotape is to borrow a digital camcorder w/analog inputs (Almost all sony DV camcorders have this feature), and use the camcorder as a converter to transfer the analog to digital. Plug your VHS into the analog inputs, and Voila! your output is automatically digital. Even if you have to go and buy a second camcorder with that feature, you'll save time, money, and a lot of headaches rather than trying to set up your computer to capture analog footage (if it's even possible on your computer). A decent quality video capture card will easily cost more than a cheap DV camcorder, and the quality would probably be better from the camcorder. Plus, while you're transfering, you can copy your footage onto digital tape for later editing