As I sit here staring at my collection of well-over 1200 VHS tapes (all stuff I’ve recorded myself in the past 19 years), I dream of the day when I can convert them all (well, most of them, anyway) to DVDs. Especially my MST3K collection.
The price of Panasonic’s stand-alone recorder w/40Gb hard drive is coming down (right now the prices stand at $700+). How easy/hard is it to use? Seems like you’d have to do all the work through the remote.
Would it make any sense to build a PC that’s dedicated to the same purpose? I’m thinking it would have to have the following:
2Ghz processor or better
512Mb memory or more
High end video card w/video outputs
Video capture board
DVD authoring software
DVD burner (duh!)
120Gb hard drive partitioned or a smallish drive (20-40Gb) for the OS & programs and a bigger one (100Gb+ for the data)
Well, an eMac with DVD burner will set you back $1300, but only has a 60GB hard-drive. A tower with DVD burner and 120GB drive will go for $2700 (plus screen), and I’m not sure if that has an analogue video capture built in or if that’s an extra. I have no idea what a PC-based system would go for, as I don’t do windows. But if you already have a computer, the stand-alone would be cheaper. If you want the computer for other stuff as well, then being able to burn DVD’s on it won’t add a huge amount to the cost…
Then again, you said `dedicated’. Buying a multi-purpose tool like a computer and dedicating it to a single task is never going to be as good an idea as getting a single-purpose tool designed for that task.
Oh, you’re looking at the one with the HD? Did you check onecall.com,? I got my Panasonic E30 (no HD model, I don’t need one I use double sided disks) from them, I read on techbargains.com they have a link to it from there where its only $359, price keeps dropping though (I paid $444, but came with a rebate for a really nice extra dvd player).
If you used a computer it would take you dozens of times longer than using the recorder & the quality from the recorder is incredible.
Plus, your computer often slows down when writing a dvd (even if its 3ghz) to a crawl.
I use that panasonic e30 to put 2 or 3 vhs videos on one dvd-r in LP mode, as VHS really doesn’t look any better at a better quality setting than LP ( Which looks incredible just as well because the e30 writes it’s own format, VBX or something). The menu is kinda simple but looks fine & you can write whatever names you want & it automatically makes chapters every 5 minutes & the write to disk takes about 30 seconds–amazing, eh?
Also, the e30 has a manual online–search for it & finalizing a dvd takes only 4 minutes. It has a whopping three s-video or a/v inputs (you could input multiple vcrs).
"Why would a computer take longer to burn a DVD? "
Because you have to write it to your HD before you can write it to a dvd. The panasonic writes it to a dvd as you record it, then it takes 30 seconds where is says ‘writing information to disk’, whatever that means.
The computer would be a more flexible solution, but only if you’re willing to take the time to learn how to do it right.
Basically, with a computer, you have two options. You can capture the VHS tape straight to MPEG2, which is the codec DVD uses. Then you just burn those files straight to DVD. Quality suffers, however, because your computer is encoding the video at the same time it’s being captured.
The other option is to capture the VHS with a lossless or semi-lossless codec, which will yield HUGE files (think 30-40GB per hour), which you then slowly encode to MPEG2. This produces great quality, but takes forever. The real advantage, however, is that you can lower the bitrate to fit more video on one disc. Assuming your DVD player supports it (most do), you can even encode the video to MPEG1, which looks better at lower bitrates.
If you’re cheap, you can even use this process to burn Video CDs on regular CD-Rs that will play in most DVD players. You wouldn’t even have to buy a DVD burner. Of course, you’ll be able to fit far less on a disc, but the discs are a lot cheaper (usually free if you like waiting for mail-in rebates).
If you’re not willing to spend many hours reading and experimenting (in addition to the extra time it’s going to take to actually back up the things), however, the stand-alone may be your best bet. Having never used one, I’m not sure exactly how flexible they are. handy sure makes them sound pretty sweet, though.
Oh, and you could accomplish what you want to do with the computer you have now. Just buy a PCI TV card for $50-100. Encoding will be slower, for sure, but the encoder I use only requires a 500MHz machine and I’ve used it successfully on a 350MHz machine.
Can you set the chapter stops manually? How about editing out material from the tape that you don’t want? I have a lot of tapes with assorted tv shows and other odd and ends that I would like to consolidate without having to stop and start the tapes. That’s why I’d like to get the hard-drive based recorder.
I recently purchased a Sony RZ22G compuer for just that purpose (in my case, copying/converting our old VHS home videos of the kids to DVD). The computer cost me $1450 at Best Buy a couple of months ago (it’s probably cheaper now). 2.4GHZ CPU, 512MB memory, 80GB hard disk (which wasn’t large enough, IMHO, but then I already had a large USB 2.0 hard disk), DVD burner, existing VHS-style Video in jacks, etc.
For my needs, a standalone computer was definitely the way to go, because we’re editing our home video collection to build customized DVDs for our relatives that include just the pieces of our collection that feature their kids. And, of course, I got a new computer out of it. Your mileage may differ.
I like the idea of making a dvd from vhs with a dvd recorder then editting it on the pc again & doing another dvd. Still, 20 gigs is a large file to deal with.