I understand your frustration with the learning curve, but once you have your technique down, it gets to be very quick and simple. Inexpensive (or even free), too.
Here’s what I use:
VirtualVCR (freeware) for capture. Depending on length and quality of source, I capture at 720x480 to either uncompressed (~60GB/hour) AVI or HuffyUV AVI (~30GB/hour).
VirtualDub (freeware) for finding the beginning and ending frames of the capture, and of sequences of video I want to remove (e.g. commercials).
AVIsynth (freeware), a frameserver. This creates something of a “virtual” AVI file for the encoder to work on. Instead of seeing the whole AVI file you captured, it sees through the eyes of the virtual file, which has your defined commercial breaks and other simple effects (fades and things). This speeds up the encoding process since the encoder doesn’t have to deal with any video that you won’t be using. You can also open your virtual AVI in VirtualDub to extract the audio.
AVIsynth is a scripting language, but it’s easy to learn, especially for simple things; the full script to load an AVI file and cut out several commercial breaks is only 2 lines of text.
Video encoding with TMPGenc Plus 2.5 ($37). Or, if you want to do it even cheaper (read: free), try the up-and-coming QuEnc encoder.
DVD authoring with TMPGenc DVD Author ($68). You can’t use it to make fancy, complex, menus, but for basic authoring, this program is very fast and easy to use. Here is a listing of many authoring programs, several of which are freeware.
So yeah, I guess there are a lot of programs involved, but if you think of it less as “learning a bunch of programs” and more as “saving $700,” you may find it to be well worth your time.
We do still have a VCR attached to the home theatre system, but with a Tivo, a DVD player and an additional DVD recorder w/hard drive, the old VCR doesn’t see much action. I doubt that it ever will see action either, since we were able to use the DVD recorder to archive our entire home video collection to DVD. But we don’t feel like ditching the VCR just yet.
I got both DVD and VCR, and I use the DVD player for renting/buying movies. I use the VCR for recording TV every once a awhile. I like the quality of DVD a lot, but one thing that bothers me is how often a DVD will freeze/skip. I’ve never had that same problem very often, or at all with a VCR, but it seems to happen far too often with the DVD player.
From 1984 til 2003, I had a myriad of VCRs. Through the years, I have probably killed a dozen VCRs. Then I got a PVR with my satellite system. In 2003, I got a DVD burner w/o a harddrive. I continued to tape stuff I wanted to keep. Last year, I got a DVD burner for the computer that reads the DVD-RAM disks my DVD recorder uses. I can now tranfer everything to the computer to make DVD-Rs.
I use TMPGEnc for the majority of my discs. You can modify the existing menu templates to a small extent. I could by higher end software, but it’s just for me, so I don’t see the need.
As for tranferring VHS to DVD: at one time I had over 1200 tapes (about 230 were devoted to MST3K and another 100 or so were Star Trek-related). I had a lot of TV shows on tape. Some I’ve bought commercially released DVD box sets as replacements because the tapes were not in the best shape.
I’ve started going through the tapes one by one to see if there’s anything I want to save. I’m trying to bring together odds and ends that were scattered over a bunch of tapes: clips from Letterman, specific music artists, etc.
I’ve managed to transfer the entire run of MST3K to disc at the rate of 2 eps per disc with no loss of picture quality. It’ll probably be another year or so and I should be VHS-free.
I hate my DVD player. I have a combo DVD/VHS unit, on which the picture freezes so consistently on the DVD that I’m reduced to watching movies on my laptop if I’ve got a DVD. I suppose I should just pick up a stand-along DVD player to watch movies on my full-size TV screen instead of the laptop monitor, but I’m too lazy and too cheap (I just bought the DVD/VHS unit about a year ago, and it played okay at first but has been deteriorating gradually.) Even then I’m queazy about buying a technology that’s still, in my experience, in the experimental stage.
I have my VCR and expect to for a long time still. The fact is that many movies I own are either not on DVD at all, or are movies I’m very happy with having on VHS rather than forking over $20+ to “upgrade”. There are some films where that is an exception, but not many.
I don’t need fancy new subsription services or highly-fangled what-nots that cost a lot more money. I know how to set the clock on the VCR, so that works just fine for recording stuff periodically, thank you very much.
I don’t rent movies much, but when I do I still rent videos on occasion because the movies are either, again, not available on DVD, or sometimes the only format I can find that isn’t rented.
I have a DVD player and a VCR - both have their own merits - Videos are generally very cheap now and recently released DVDs are still quite expensive. They are beginning to start getting cheaper though
DVD does have the better quality aspect though - and it is far superior - I have replaced some of the better of my video collection with their DVD version.
If my VCR died anytime soon though I’d be tempted to not bother replacing it.
I still have my VCR, but I haven’t used it in a long while. The only problem with going purely digital is that a lot of older movies (‘older’ meaning pre-2000) still haven’t been released on DVD (at least not here), so I keep the VCR around.
Any movie I buy, however, I buy on DVD. Come to think of it, I hardly ever bought movies before DVD. Just something about spending $10-40 on something that would deteriorate so quickly from the moment I started using it.
Count me as gradually transitioning - don’t have a DVD recorder or TiVo or similar (yet), but may well do at some point in the near future. And I’m gradually replacing a large collection of tapes with an equally large collection of DVDs … The VCR is still around, and in use, for the moment, though, and will probably be around for a while yet.
Some time back Slashdot carried the story of how the UK’s largest electronics retail chain had stopped carrying VCR’s totally. The raio of DVD player to VCR sales was around 40:1, and is rising.
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While I have a DVD player for watching rented movies and the handful of store-bought movies I own, I’m still in the dark ages when it comes to recording as I still use my trusty super VHS VCR. Once I can afford one I will pick up a DVD recorder and then just use the VCR for the things I don’t yet have transferred to video CD or DVD format.
Since you asked, yes. Some that were popular Hollywood fare, and some that were smaller, quirkier movies. Personally, you’d be prying the **Lord of the Rings ** trilogy, Casablanca, **Monty Python and the Holy Grail ** or The Princess Bride out of my cold, dead hands, and I can casually drop snippets of each into conversation, which would suggest some long-lasting impact.
There are also several t.v. series that I’ve purchased on DVD as well, and they also run the gamut from the fairly commonly popular American t.v. series like **Frasier ** or the popular here at the SDMB (but mystifylingly not everywhere) Firefly, to the British such as Fawlty Towers or **Yes, Minister ** to Corner Gas, my lone Canadian entry.
But, hey, whatever makes you happy, YMMV, etc. I won’t be rushing out to buy copies of the American Pie movies, or likely most any movie with Jim Carrey in it, nor would I buy The Apprentice. Obviously each has its own audience though, or they wouldn’t be produced. I’m just not part of it.
Oh, and back on topic, I don’t buy VHS at all. Since I got my DVD player I have bought far too many DVDs. I love 'em.
I’m glad this has come up. My DVD player died over the weekend and I’m getting a new one. Actually I did buy a new one, one that will play PAL as well as all the other regions.
However, is there something other then Tivo or other subscription based recorder? I wouldn’t mind getting rid of my VCR now that I don’t use it much and I’d love to be able to tape some things off the TV. I don’t have many channels, maybe 20, and only tape a few things a month. I don’t keep anything and really don’t want to pay $10 a month just so I don’t have to use my VCR. Is there any good, cheap recorders out there? I wouldn’t mind having a second DVD player so if they have a recorder/DVD player that’s not more then $150 I can deal. Everything I’ve seen though has been either a Tivo or high priced DVD/recorder.
