Father to be needs help!! Cheap DVDR deck or video capture card??

[Saxon]

Hi,
Would really appreciate your help. I have an existing S-VHSC camcorder and about 15-20 tapes I would like to archive to DVD to free up space on tape for filming our first baby due in February. I may do some editing of some of the material in future - and for example might want to put together a baby video for the Grandparents on DVD. I also have around 50 VHS tapes I would like to copy to DVD to reduce the amount of space they are taking up. They're a mixture of old movies taped off the telly and some pre-recorded bought tapes - ZZ Top's Greatest Hits etc (Now that I have shaved off the beard!!)

I was in PC World yesterday and spotted the Adaptec Videoh media centre AVC-2310 on offer for £49 so bought it because it offers the facility to capture S-video from my camcorder. I was under the impression however that it would capture the video as lossless AVI thus enabling editing without loss. In fact it seems to be capturing and sending to the computer as MPEG2 which as I understand it means when I edit I will lose quality - is this correct??? Can the AVC-2310 capture in high quality for editing without loss??

If the Adaptec only captures analogue video as Mpeg2 would I be wise to return it and just buy a cheap DVDR deck like the Eurotec DVR4001 or Yamada DVR8000. Presumably they would enable me to capture in Mpeg2 which I could burn to DVD, then pop in the laptop and edit in Windows moviemaker or whatever. Wouldn't this offer the same quality but with a lot less hassle plus offering far easier copying of my VHS tapes???

I did incidentally consider getting a new DV camera with firewire and pass-through (laptop has firewire) but the cheapest with analogue pass through was around £300 and to be honest with a baby coming I'd rather spend £50 on a card or £100 on a DVDR machine than £300 on a new camcorder when I'm actually quite happy with the quality of my Panasonic SX50 camcorder.

I'd welcome opinions on whether to return the Videoh capture card and pop into to Richer sounds today for a cheap DVD recorder or whether the video capture card offers any real quality benefits.

Any ideas??

Saxon

[vonhosen]

Depends what you want really

Editing MPEG-2 can be a bit of a pain. Most NLE software is based around AVI editing. You can get cheap MPEG editors like Womble if you search the net (I personally don't bother).

Capturing analogue (if the original source is poor) can also be a disappointment. If you capture poor analogue making it digital is not going to make the picture better, you have to be realistic.

I personally use an analogue to digital converter. There are quite a few of these about but I use the Canopus ADVC-100. This is a small box that is bi-directional (converts analogue to digital OR can go the from digital on PC back to analogue on VHS etc) You connect via composite/S-Video & audio on oneside & then from firewire out to the PC wher it is captured as an AVI file. With this I have never had any dropped frames & audio is always in sync , which can be another problem with analogue capture.

You'll be OK with all this on your homemade stuff but I suspect that your ZZ Top & commercial tapes will have macrovision copy protection so you may struggle to copy them.

Another option is getting a VHS/DVD Recorder player like the Panasonic DMR-E75V . I have one of these too & it's great.

[Saxon]

VonHosen,

Many thanks for your reply. I'm pleased to report that I'm having a little success. I spent two days trying to get the Adaptec Videoh working and never once did it manage to capture a single complete 30 minute tape from the camcorder. The software also repeatedly caused my PC to crash or lock-up so all in all it was an immensely frustrating experience. I also hadn't realised when I bought it that editing Mpeg2 was going to lead to loss of quality and complexity.

So, I popped back into PC world last night and bought a Dazzle 90 video capture device with a promise I could return the other one. This seems to work brilliantly, the editing software (PInnacle STudio 9) is much better and it will also capture AVI, Mpeg or whatever you want thus making it easier to edit with all the industry standard packages.

I gather the dazzle is supposed to rely on the PC for the video conversion whereas the Adaptec had it's own hardware encoder which should have been better. In my case, the Sony Vaio GRT815m (2.8Ghz/Geforce Go5600 64MB/512MB RAM) seems the better solution.

Thought some of you may appreciate the feedback on my experiences. Ultimately I can see the best option is the dazzle for home movie conversion and a DVD Recorder for copying over VHS tapes and recording from cable TV.

Best regards,

Saxon

[fallwood]

Get a panasonic drm e65 dvd recorder. I just got one and the quality is amazing, it also has dv-firewire input so if you upgrade to a dv-cam you can record directly from the cam via dv output. I used to use my pc via firewire to capture video from my dv-cam and re-encode using canopus procoder but the results from the e65 are better (I couldnt beleive it at first but they are) and much quicker, you can always edit the dvd contents on the pc if you need to , there is loads of really good mpeg2 editing software out there. Before I had a dv cam I used an all in wonder card for capturing video, complete pain in the arse to use and bugged as hell, now taken it out and am using th e65 to capture any video I need thats not already on dvd. Absolutely superb, get one youll love it.