Do any of you have the capability to transfer VHS tapes to DVD, either via your PC's or on a stand-alone machine? If so, what kind of hardware/software do you like and what kinds do you dislike? I am seriously considering investing in a mega mega memory machine to transfer all my VHS to DVD, and would like to learn from others' experiences.
I have a DELL P4 machine with 512mb of RAM and two 100GB hard drives. (These days, not as expensive as you would think.) I use software from Sonic Foundry, however, I think that Sony has bought it out. I use Roxio 6.0 from Adaptec software to burn the DVD, it has been flawless.
Hardware: I use a home built machine with a liquid cooled Athlon 2500+ clocked to 3200+, and 2 SATA 80G 7200rpm drives striped to raid 0 mode to keep up. Video Capture is thru an ATI All In Wonder card connected to my VCR. I save the data as MPEG2 format, which takes up a lot of hard drive space and the drives need to be fast to keep upwith the capture rate for MPEG2. I use TMPGenc software afterwards to convert the data to SVCD format, but it also can convert it to DVD format, then burn the disc with NERO. It takes about 2 hours to do a 1 hour tape into SVCD, and I would think DVD takes the same time since the formats are almost the same. I have actually finished doing my whole VHS library as of last summer, but it took 1.5 years. Now I just have a fast computer left over.
Coaltrain, I have looked at the print on that, do you have one? Can you edit well on it? Barry, no "coasters" with your equipment? Pray, sounds like you da man with that stuff. How bout I just send you mine and you charge me (how much) per hour DVD? Thanks for the quick answers.
