A friend of mine needs to convert a bunch of PAL VHS tapes to NTSC DVDs, and I’m helping him do some research.
Lots of companies that will do this for you, but he wants to do it himself as there are a LOT of tapes and outsourcing isn’t cheap.
He has a PAL VCR… I know there are several all-in-one units for NTSC VHS to DVD xfer, but do those exist that also convert between formats? I haven’t been able to find any.
I’ve got options to rig a dub system, or to go through a computer… but have had no luck with finding a standalone deck that just does it.
Anyone know if these decks exist and if so, where I can buy one?
Yes. Sorry, I was unclear when I said I had options to do through a computer, I meant similar processes. But that now involves the extra step of digitizing footage and then outputting the footage.
That’s a very doable last resort, but we’re looking for something that can skip the computer altogether.
What do you mean… you mean the machine will degrade over time? Or are you talking about dub generations? I’m aware of that. But I don’t think it’d be any worse going from tape to DVD (and obviously digitally encoding at that time) than it would be going from tape to computer and encoding then, before going to DVD…
You’d have options to clean up the image a bit in the comp, but otherwise…
There are VHS->DVD recorders that convert from PAL to NTSC. Here’s one. That would be the least amount of degradation and pressing a “start” button is pretty simple.
Right, there should be no difference between doing it in a dedicated unit as opposed to through your PC, except of course that you have more options if you go through your PC.
Ideally you’d get the video into the PC by recording in a lossless format. You can then apply any noise/enhacement filters you want while encoding to your target compression (Mpg2 if it’s going to DVD). And you’d finally author the DVD (create the menus, extras, etc), then burn.