DVD authoring

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pdp76

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Jan 31, 2006
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My dad wants to convert his VHS tapes to DVD. He currently has an OLD P4, 2.66GHz CPU. I want him to finish converting his VHS tapes before he dies so I figure it's best to get him a new computer to do the job faster (not saying he's dying! just emphasizing how slow the P4 is :p). I just wanted some opinions and advice on how to go about doing this...

Anyway, he doesn't want to spend too much money so don't start suggesting a Core i7 980x. That being said though, I do realize something with multiple cores will probably speed up DVD authoring, so first question: Intel or AMD? Seems like AMD you can get more cores for less money, but how much of an advantage would that be? I'm hoping to get in on one of those Fry's mobo/cpu combos for $100 or less (I would like to keep the price in that area), I've seen some pretty decent quad core AMDs in that price range, but no Intel, so it seems like AMD has the advantage here, but I was hoping to hear some more opinions on this.

Next question, maybe it shouldn't be in this forum section, but which software, preferably free or as cheap as possible, would utilize a multi-core system the best for DVD authoring? Also, ease of use would be great for my dad.

And final question, he currently has one of those USB dongles to do the video capturing from a VCR. It's very basic (some cheap KWORLD deal), I doubt it has any MPEG compression hardware on it so the brunt of the work will depend on the CPU which I'm ok with. I'm not too concerned about quality because hey, VHS tapes suck anyway, just as long as the quality isn't horrible... anyway, is there any reason why I should look into getting a different capturing device?

Aside from the mobo/CPU, I won't need anything else, except RAM of course which I'm ok with.. I'll just recycle most of his old parts and maybe get him a faster hard drive too.

Thanks in advance!
 
Core i7 is definitely the best for video encoding right now. I recommend using the encoder "HC" for MPEG-2 and authoring the DVDs with DVD Lab Pro. I do recommend a higher quality capture card, though. In any case, processing the video will end up with better quality but is, of course, not as straightforward. You should, at the very least, use a software comb filter like TComb for AVISynth.
 
I started converting my dad's vhs tapes for him. using my core2duo in the sig and a hauppauge PVR-150 using svideo from my sony player.

I use DVD Flick because its free and dead simple to author discs. You can add menus and other stuff with their templates. I forget how long it takes but it wasn't worth worrying over, it was fast enough for me to be content.

There are a lot of benchmarks out there which show off encoding comparisons. http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/29
 
outspoken said:
I started converting my dad's vhs tapes for him. using my core2duo in the sig and a hauppauge PVR-150 using svideo from my sony player.

I use DVD Flick because its free and dead simple to author discs. You can add menus and other stuff with their templates. I forget how long it takes but it wasn't worth worrying over, it was fast enough for me to be content.

There are a lot of benchmarks out there which show off encoding comparisons. http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/29
Click to expand...
The Hauppauge you mentioned has an MPEG2 encoder on it, so that's probably why everything zips along when you author your dvds since everything is already in MPEG2 format.

But, I'm glad you mentioned it because I just remembered I have an old Hauppauge 150 buried somewhere that I can give to my dad... but, my concern about that is the hardware mpeg2 compression, despite being more efficient, won't be as good quality as software encoding. Any thought on this anyone?

But thanks for the heads up on the software, I'll definitely check it out. And thanks for that CPU benchmark link too...I just ended up getting a Athlon II x4 630 for my dad. I think that should handle everything very sufficiently.
 
I guarantee you that HC will totally destroy it as far as image quality goes. Second (yes, SECOND) place is the elite CCE (Cinemacraft Encoder), which will also destroy it in IQ.
 
pdp76 said:
The Hauppauge you mentioned has an MPEG2 encoder on it, so that's probably why everything zips along when you author your dvds since everything is already in MPEG2 format.

But, I'm glad you mentioned it because I just remembered I have an old Hauppauge 150 buried somewhere that I can give to my dad... but, my concern about that is the hardware mpeg2 compression, despite being more efficient, won't be as good quality as software encoding. Any thought on this anyone?

But thanks for the heads up on the software, I'll definitely check it out. And thanks for that CPU benchmark link too...I just ended up getting a Athlon II x4 630 for my dad. I think that should handle everything very sufficiently.
Click to expand...

sure, glad you were able to make use of the info.

i personally didn't notice much difference. If I were watching the videos on my desktop it would probably bother me but my dad was more than happy with the quality.
 
I have been using AVStoDVD. Its free and open-source. It was quite nice for me and nothing overboard and complicated for making scenes.
 
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