Converting VHS to DVD, suggestions welcome.

hackerError

Hello,
I am helping my father convert all of our old home movies from VHS to dvd. I have my desktop set up with a vcr coming in through a bttv card, and plan on burning the videos to dvd. That's about as far as I've gotten. Has anyone experience with this? Is there a utility designed with this in mind or am I probably going to want to get something to save the VHS to a video file, then burn them to a dvd with another? If so does anyone have suggestions for this? It would really be a good thing to do for my das as he has been wanting to do it for a long time. Thanks in advance, guys.
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rojaro · l33t Joined: 06 May 2002 Posts: 732

Hi,

if you just intend to copy the stuff, you can do that with mencoder (-> it comes with mplayer) which provides support and recording functions for V4L devices such as BTTV cards. It's command line based but the results are good, but i believe there are also a few more userfriendly methods to do that.

- rojaro -
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A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems. ~ Alfred Renyi (*1921 - †1970)

hackerError · Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2005 5:43 pm Post subject:

This is hopefully going to be a project that I can set up and then let him do as he has the time to do it, so command line would probably be a bad idea. Whatever we do I need to be able to have him do by himself, the actual putting it to dvd and ripping from VHS I mean. I am going to of course set everything up.
_________________
Before you insult someone, it is often best to walk a mile in their shoes.

That way when you insult them you're already a mile away and have their shoes.

VoVaN · Posted: Tue Oct 18, 2005 10:06 am Post subject:

I've been doing the same a while ago, but the best option I've found is using my SONY dv camera to convert VHS->DV on the fly and I used dvgrab for recording to disk (you can use kino as GUI for dvdgrab). AFAIK, a lot of video cameras (like mine) can do conversion on the fly to digital format (DV). I've been quite satisfied with the quality. After that you can use avidemux+dvdauthor (for instance) for creating DVD. If you need more details let me know.

rojaro · l33t Joined: 06 May 2002 Posts: 732

Hi again,

using DV is a lot easier than using V4L devices. You can use Kino and/or Cinelerra for reading from DV devices. Both programs provide a really nice intuitive GUI. But that would mean that you have to transfer your VHS tapes to DV first and then you can copy the DV data directly to your PC and for that you need either a DV recorder or a DV camcorder with Video-IN interface.

- rojaro -
_________________
A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems. ~ Alfred Renyi (*1921 - †1970)

hackerError · Posted: Wed Oct 19, 2005 7:05 pm Post subject:

Our video camera is older than I am I think, and doesn't have anything fancy to it. I'm still working on this but my dad is getting impatient, so anyone else have any suggestion? I could set up a script that does the command line parts when he clicks a button on a desktop or something, but I'm also having no luck with the command line.

Genjix · Apprentice Joined: 23 Jun 2005 Posts: 163

whats the output (minus > /dev/null) and try verbose.

Genjix · Apprentice Joined: 23 Jun 2005 Posts: 163

I have got it working now and have posted a new topic for others to see (what to unmask, what to emerge .etc)

bakaohki · Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2005 11:56 am Post subject: mencoder

I use mencoder too, but assembling those parameters were quite painful. In case someone is interested kmenc15 can be used for generating the parameters, so adding deinterlace, crop and resize is much easier this way.