Converting VHS to DVD - advice needed please

[Reyneth]

I have literally hundreds upon hundreds of home-recorded VHS tapes (not copyright protected) that I need to get converted to a more durable and space-friendly format, aka DVD.

But how?

There are things that will need edited before the final version. Is it better to get a DVD-recorder with hard drive or to get the AV-DV converter cables to go to my computer and edit there? Note - I have a Mac, so the options are limited for compatibility.

Can you edit things effectively from a hard drive on a DVD recorder? I do have 2+ VHS players so maybe I could edit on the tapes and then just go to DVD from there? Although the time to do that will be astronomical.

Added to this is the fact that my DVD player has apparently died on me so I'm going to need to replace that anyway. And I want to make sure whatever method I chose is something that will be practical in the future - why I might be leaning towards the recorder with the hard drive. I do have a small knowledge of transferring VHS to VHS but no experience editing video on my computer yet.

Words of wisdom? Advice? Thanks for the help!

[draggar]

I don't have your issue but from what I've heard most VCD-DVD combo units will NOT copy from VHS to DVD.

But - there are things you can get for the PC. I have a "Dazzle" - it's USB to RCA and connects to the VCR's RCA jacks. I put in a movie and it will convert it to an ISO file (or other DVD media) and then I can burn it to DVD.

One problem - it takes a LONG TIME. We have the original Star Wars on VHS and I converted it to DVD - it took close to 2 days. Also, if the PC lags the quality can get hurt. Chapters have to be manually set, too.

I've also done some old moves on VHA (no longer available on DVD) as well as some home videos.

With as many as you have and with the importantce as it is you may want to consider getting it done professionally.

As for editing - I'm assuming you're talking about cutting etc..? Go out and get Adobe's Premier Elements (sometimes packaged with Photoshop Elements for about $150). I use it to make my DVDs and it's great.

[Reyneth]

Thanks, but unfortunately Dazzle doesn't seem to come in a format for Macs.

Doing it professionally could cost as much as my yearly salary - that many tapes and that much editing! But not looking for too much when it comes to the editing, just cutting out commercials and creating a menu and chapters. There are programs on my Mac already that I think can do that.

[RichS]

No experience with Macs doing this, unfortunately, but I can share how I've done it.

I got fortunate to get a VHS player that ignores the Macrovision protection while giving good picture quality. That's hooked up via RCA audio/video cables to an old ATI TV Wonder card - good enough for what is needed. I use an dual-core AMD Opteron system and an old version of Cyberlink's PowerDirector (3) to input the video. Once I have the video, I can transfer to my main system for editing/burning.

On my system, the conversion is in real time - how long the video is is how long the conversion takes.

I've done a few conversions, some personal video, some purchased movies, and it works well.

[lordlundar]

So far as device goes: This seems to be the least expensive option for a mac, though much like most stuff mac related, it's more expensive that the PC equivalent.

That said, here's some info when you get started:

- It's long. Analog to Digital conversion is essentially just digitally recording a playback and, as such, is done in real time. So if you have a 3 hour movie, don't expect it done in 10 minutes. The time is compounded when you put it to DVD which is a similar timeline.

- It eats up space. For a decent quality conversion, you need to have it in good quality which takes up a ton of space. Having a large external drive for storage is a good idea. (note: don't directly transfer to or from the external, as it's a bottleneck that can ruin the movie.)

- The quality isn't the greatest. Don't expect BluRay from a VHS. What you play it at on your tv in VHS is exactly what you will get when you play it on DVD. There's some clarifying technologies out, but for the most part, it's WYSIWIG.

- It is only an extraction equipment. To do the full deal, you need your own DVD creating software. Now this isn't a big deal for a mac, but it's still a point to make. The device isn't made for straight through work and it's not recommended to try. (see note above)

-It eats up resources. You are doing some heavy work with video and if you try to multitask, it can ruin the quality. That said, when doing the conversion, your system is out of commission until you are done a particular conversion.

So in short, if you can afford to replace a particular movie for a cheap price, I recommend that option to reduce the count. Converting is a long, involved process that takes over your system during the process.

(Why yes, I have done this recently. Can you tell?)

[Pedersen]

lordlundar is pretty much spot on. The parts that he didn't mention, I can cover in a bit more detail.

First up, he's right about the initial conversion/import time, mainly because of what will happen. You have to hook up your VCR's output to an input on your computer. This is likely to be a composite video cable. You will also need to connect the audio output from your VCR to your computer's audio in. This is likely to be your Line In port.

After that, you configure your computer's recording settings, hit record on the computer, and then hit play on your VCR. You wait until the movie is done playing, and then you edit as necessary. Once that's done, you do a second conversion that creates the video to go one the DVD. Once that conversion is done, you use a program to make the DVD itself, and this could involve still a third conversion.

Now, here's the bad part: Each of those conversions is going to be what's known as "lossy". This is due to some details of the size of video, which now has to be explained.

Standard VHS resolution in the US will be (approximately) 352x240. If you use a higher resolution, you might get somewhat higher output quality, but it won't be much higher. I would most certainly not go higher than 640x480, not for a VHS input. For each pixel, you will need to store 3 bytes for the color (standard is 24 bit color, which provides about 16,700,000 colors).

Here's some quick math: 352x240x3=253,440 bytes per frame. NTSC moves at 29.97 frames per second, and a typical movie is two hours long, which means 215,784 frames being recorded. 253,440 bytes per frame, times 215,784 frames, means 54,688,296,960 bytes, or (roughly) 54.6 gigs of movie, and that's at the very lowest resolution. Even if video could get 2:1 compresson, that would still be 27.3 gigs of data. Yes, video is absolutely enormous amounts of data to be processed.

As a result, a way of compressing video has been found that is called "lossy". The idea is that data is thrown out that the human eye is normally incapable of detecting. The result is significantly smaller video files which can fit onto a DVD. The biggest problem with this is that multiple passes through a lossy compression results in an ugly result.

Basically, you run the video through it once while capturing, losing a significant chunk of the video. Then, after editing and cutting, you run it again, which throws out even more data. Now you're going to start to see things, since what was left after the first encoding pass was supposed to all that could be removed without affecting video quality. Since more is removed, you will be able to see some issues. Now, run it through a compressor again, and still more gets lost. You can see where the damage can occur.

With all of that said, there are some things you can do that will improve your overall output quality.

• Reduce the number of times you have to re-encode your video. This can be done by using a tool that is capable of reading the input once, and then writing out a file that does not have to be re-encoded to write to DVD.
• Set the quality settings as high as possible on every pass through the encoder. If the encoder is an MPEG encoder of any variety, use the highest bit rate settings you can get away with. The more data being kept, the better. In this case, encoder and compressor are the same thing.
• Use a good quality VCR as your input source. This will send a cleaner picture to your computer, resulting in a better starting point.

I know that you can use iMovie, iDVD, and some other tools to do at least some of this work. I don't know the level of control you can exert, though. You might need to switch up to Final Cut Pro in order to get the control.

Finally, not all DVD players can play home made DVDs. Check to see if yours can play DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, or DVD+RW. Once you know that, make sure to use the media your DVD player can accept.

Experiment. A lot. It's going to take some time to get things to where you know what to do and how to do it.

Good luck with it. Sounds like you've got a lot of work ahead of you.

[Eric the Grey]

On the subject of the amount of time needed, this is the perfect project to run untended when you go to bed, or work.

Seriously, it'll save you tones of frustration by NOT sitting and watching the progress creep along slowly for hours on end.

I generally do conversions (not this type, but video type to video type) when I go to work (12 hour shifts) and let them run. When I come home, I normally have them all done and ready to set up to be burned to DVD.

In your case however, you will have more work to do than I do.


Eric the Grey

[Reyneth]

Thank you thank you thank you for all of the info and the link to the Roxio product.

Unfortunately, these are old sports events (gymnastics mainly) so they aren't available through the retail market. Since I do a lot of photography work, unfortunately I'm familiar with what compression can do to data/images. But in my case, I don't care that it's not HD quality. Or even new VHS quality. The reality is these are programs I want to save so if I have to take a loss in quality when doing it, that's ok - better than losing them entirely, right?

Oh, and I'm glad that my thinking of "just let it run when I'm asleep" was a good one!

It's looking more and more like my end-of-the-year extra money from work is disappearing on me. Although a friend said she has a DVD player I can borrow for a good amount of time so now I don't feel like I need to get a DVD-RW to replace it immediately.

[dendawg]

As far as compression goes, you really should import the video as uncompressed. Sure, it'll take up a lot of HD space, but when you do your final encode, your loss will be minimal when compressed.

Alternatively, there is the HuffyUV codec. This is one of the few lossless codecs available. The drawback is, file sizes will only be slightly smaller than uncompressed.

[Pedersen]

Quoth Reyneth

Since I do a lot of photography work, unfortunately I'm familiar with what compression can do to data/images.

My apologies. I'm used to people cringing when they hear terms like resolution and lossy compression, so I wanted to try to explain as a just in case.

Quoth dendawg

As far as compression goes, you really should import the video as uncompressed. Sure, it'll take up a lot of HD space, but when you do your final encode, your loss will be minimal when compressed.

Those video sizes I used were due to small resolutions. If you go with higher, then the amount of storage grows very rapidly. Common sizes and their resulting uncompressed file sizes listed below. Note that this is for a two hour movie, and is why, unless you are on a big budget, uncompressed video is just not an option:

• 352 * 240 = 52.1GiB (VHS/VCD quality)
• 480 * 480 = 142.2GiB (SVCD quality)
• 640 * 480 = 189.6GiB (very low resolution monitor)
• 720 * 480 = 213.4GiB (standard DVD resolution)
• 720 * 576 = 256.0GiB (DVD/PAL resolution, used in Europe)
• 1024 *768 = 485.5GiB (typical monitor resolution)
• 1280*1024 = 809.1GiB (typical large monitor resolution)
• 1600 * 1200 = 1,185.3GiB (bragging rights monitor resolution)
• 1920 * 1080 = 1,280.1GiB (1080p resolution, AKA HD, Blu-Ray)

For most people, recording even a single uncompressed video is not a viable option. Many operating systems have issues with single files that are over 2GB. Of those that do not, most tend to choke after 4GB. And very few of them can reliably (and speedily) handle files that get much larger than that, due to the way the file structures get written to disk. I'm not sure if OSX can handle it in a timely enough fashion.

And that neatly ignores the question of storing the original file, doing a pass that will remove segments of that file and create a new one, and possibly the third file for encoding to DVD. Even at the VCD resolution, and assuming 40% commercials, we're still looking at a solid 88G before the DVD begins being burnt. Increase the resolution even to SVCD quality, and we're looking at 232G before the DVD is being burnt.

And all of *that* ignores the difficulties in processing such large files on consumer grade equipment and software. It's entirely possible that the software used will be incapable of handling files over 2G in size, depending on how that software was written. If the operating system can handle it, it should work fine, but 2G is still a pretty common limit that has to be dealt with properly (and, unfortunately, rarely is).

And, finally, in the end, the loss is significant. In order to fit down onto a standard single-layer DVD-R, the movie must be less than 4.7G, which is less than 1/10 of the size of the smallest uncompressed video. That means that over 90% of the data must be thrown out, and be non-recoverable. No matter how you slice it, 90% data loss is significant. It can still [B[look[/B] great, but it's a significant loss.