Has anybody had any experiance of recording from VHS tapes to computer , i've got an adapter and some software (sonic MyDVD) but its not too good , also its really for making a DVD out of the Mpeg2 encoded recording . What i'm trying to do is record it in a format that i can store and playback from a 300gb harddrive , the Sonic software uses its own codecs(?) so that when i play back from the hard drive i get no sound on the recording :( so any ideas please .

do you know anyone with a dvd recorder or dvd video combi.

you can then record from an aux / scart in to the dvd recorder or from VHS to DVD.

Then rip the dvd for editing on your computer or playback.

i've got about 60 videos to do , so ideally i just want to go straight to the computer , to save on discs and time , it going to take long enough anyway and i've been saying i'm going to do it for about 4 years

I've got a Pinnacle video-editing card (with an analogue line in) on my PC which does hardware encoding of the video to MPEG2 and then you can burn that to DVD or encode it with DivX or similar to bring the file size right down. I borrowed a VCR and started doing video's one at a time, but gave up after the 3rd one. I decided it was much easier and cheaper just to buy the ones I really liked on DVD

Chris

I can think of two ways of doing it with a PC.

1) you use something like a Hauppauge WinTV USB2 PVR (clicky) which has hardware-based MPEG2 encoders built in. This will allow you to record your video into MPEG2 and you'll just need to author the DVD (make menus, and stuff), but no re-compression which can take time.

The downside is that the quality isn't as good as it could be because it's "on the fly" recording.

2) Use a normal TV capture card. Capture it in a low-loss AVI codec and then re-compress it into MPEG2 using some very good quality multiple pass encoder (like cinemacraft.com - Custom Technology Corporation/Cinema Craft Inc. ) It takes longer to do as you're numbercrunching several times, but the quality is a lot better. You then author it like you did for the case above.

For either route, it's worth talking a look at Doom9.net - The Definitive DVD Backup Resource for lots of documents and how to guides for capturing and converting to DVD

I decided it was much easier and cheaper just to buy the ones I really liked on DVD

Chris

the videos are of BTCC and WRC from about 1988 to 2000 , and other very interesting motoring programmes that will never be repeated on TV , so buying is not really an option unless i want complete seasons compressed into 1.5 hours:(

I used my Mum's Archos PVR to get some stuff off my analogue camcorder. Quality was spot on. I can't remember which one it is (it's the one with the big screen and white surround) - i just used the video in and audio in and recorded straight onto that - then you just plug the Archos straight into your PC (via USB) - and just copy the AVI file straight off. No mess, no pain! There are a range of Archos PVR's that do this (not the GMINI - no video in...), if you can find someone who has one, or alternatively they are