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VHS to DVD

B

bpimmerman

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Dec 5, 2001
Messages
1,067
I'm trying to help my dad set up a little shop where he can convert VHS tapes into DVD. I did this while working at a lab in school, and here is what we used, which was easy and worked remarkably well:

Powermac G4
Sony miniDV player with Firewire
VHS recorder/player connected to the sony player.

We used IMovie and were able to create very basic as well as very professional looking DVD's and other movie projects.

Currently, the pc that he has to dedicate to this is a pentium 3 900mhz (not great for video encoding).

IF the rumors about the $500 mac prove to be true, he is thinking about getting it as a G5 with Imovie would be ideal. He also has a VCR. But is there any sort of cheaper interface btw the computer and VCR other than the $400 sony?

He tried a $200 pinnacle capture card, but found it very slow and he had some audio sync problems, unacceptable if he is going to try and do this in some sort of volume.

Any suggestions? thanks.


 
Look on Ebay for a Matrox RT2000 editing system. It has Firewire, S-video, and composite inputs and outputs. Edits in real time with real time effects and works perfect on a P3 733 (I have this system at home, was my friends and he edited his 2 hour movie on it, www.whatismoving.com)
You can get this card combo for about $150. It comes with a Matrox G400 video card and the RT2000 card. Both cards must be used together since they hook together with a ribbon cable and will not work if both are not installed.

Only thing that will take a lot of time is encoding it to a DVD-Compliant MPEG-2 format.
I'd recommend Adobe Encore for the Authoring and Encoding of the DVD.

Another option is getting a Matrox RT.X100 which does real time MPEG-2 encoding. that card can be had for $650-1100 new depending on the software bundle you choose. This is the system we use at the studio.
 
Here is the device that we bought for my Dad to use. Plextor ConvertX It has a simple interface and was fairly easy to teach my Dad how to use it. The site says it is 159$ but I think we bought his from Tiger Direct for around 120$.
 
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