This seems to be the #1 thing people like me want to learn how to do. Instead of everyone asking a question here and there and getting pieces of answers, I have a better idea:

If you've managed to do this and gotten good results (a VCD that was at least close to looking as good as the original VHS) why don't you make a detailed post here and tell us EXACTLY how you did it?

Tell us what kind of machine you have, what capture card you used (analog, DV, etc), what your steps were, how much the stuff cost - everything. Go into all the detail you want, because I know there must be a lot of people out there who WANT to know!

If enough people take the time to do this, a whole bunch of us will get the answers we need all at once :-)

Info about SVCD is also very much welcome... specifics about how you can get 45 minutes of SVCD on a disc (an hour of TV with the commercials edited out) would be great, too.

So who's first?

-- Mojo (mojospfx@aol.com), November 13, 2000

Answers

I'll go first then, System..... P3 550mhz, 128mb pc100 ram, fujitsu udma66 5400rpm 17gb hd, ati all in wonder pro agp 3x 8mb gfx card (2d/3d with built in tv devices), Sound Blaster Live Value card and Windows ME with direct x8 final on an ABIT BE6 version1 motherboard with latest bios.

Additional Devices..... Hitachi Nicam 4 head vcr with scart to phono plug leads connected to ATI card.

Software Used.... ATI standard installation and TMpegEnc (latest version) with Nero Burning Rom v5031 (official update)

How....... Set to capture ATI software with these settings: 25 fps, 352*240 and 44khz 16bit stereo sound TO AVI, using the highest compression ratio codec available eg. 16:1 hence a two hour film captured in two halves will be 3gb total (1.5gb per AVI). So its a PAL vcd i'm making.

Put the first AVI into TmpegEnc and load the pal vcd template, and add these settings.... CROP FRAMES - 4 LINES EDGE ENHANCE - VALUE OF 50 HIGH QUALITY SETTING and thats all, it takes around 5 to 6 hours to create each mpeg. Finally, start Nero Burning ROM and choose 'NEW - VCD' and just drag and drop the mpegs into the window. There are two ways of burning your vcd... 1 - Write at single speed which takes around 70 mins per disc 2 - Drag and drop your mpeg file into the window and choose virtual recorder and wirte the vcd layout to an image file (takes 4 mins) then load the image back into Nero, choose your CD-RW drive and click on write, this method takes around 1/2 hour altogether.

Not much to it really. I found it difficult at first, but now with some good software on the net it's becoming simpler. But it takes practice.

Other good software available....... VirtualDub for AVI cpature (low system resources when working means higher data rate of AVI) BBMpeg meg encoder, not bad, with some useful features Panasonic Encoder, really slow to encode from AVI to Mpeg1 but the results are rock solid everytime.

One last point, capture cards should be AGP and not PCI, because they have higher data transfer speeds (i know someone is going to flame me for saying that) an dalways defrag your hard drive first.

All the best and NEEEXXXTT!!!!

Andy

-- Andy (andy@snes.freeserve.co.uk), November 13, 2000.

If you are transferring VHS to standard VCD format using a VCR with composite cables and you want the same quality as the original tape while watching it on a 27" television you are probably going to be disappointed. Especially if your video has a lot of motion in it. A standard VCD is locked into a standard bit rate and if the video you are converting requires more than this standard the result it going to be a picture with artifacts.This is going to be true no matter what software/hardware you are using. There is also going to be a loss of quality due to the fact that you are using a composite cable to go from the VCR to the capture card. What a lot of people are doing to eliminate most of the blockiness and get a better quality picture is to use a higher bit rate than the standard VCD allows(SVCD) This gives you a better picture and makes for a larger mpg file so you get less time on your CD. There are a few sotware VCD aothorware programs that will accept the higher bit rate mpg files. Adaptec will NOT accept these. NTI and I think Nero and WinOnCD will accept these files. The DVD players are limited as to what they will play when using a higher bit rate. I have the Pioneer 525 and it will accept around 2500 but the remote doesn't function at 100%. If I stop the video and fast forward or rewind the sound drops out when I hit play. I have to stop the video and restart for the audio to work again.

I have a pentium III 550 mhz, 128 meg ram, Broadway 5.0 capture/encoder card. Adaptec EZ CD Creator, WinOnCD 3.7, NTI The advantage of the Broadway card is that it is a harware assisted mpg encoder, meaning that it will encode to an mpg-1 file in real time. It works best if you capture to AVI and then encode to mpg. This is preferred because it is ALMOST impossible to edit a MPG file and it is produces a better mpg file. I originally bought the Dazzle DVC and returned as soon as possible because the results were horrible when creating a Video CD and watching it on my 27" television.

-- Al (amccraw@ix.netcom.com), November 15, 2000.

After reading all the high tech stuff, here's what I do and it's REAL simple and I get great results...go spend $250 and buy a Dazzle Digital Video Creator at your local electronics store. I bought one about two months ago and am VERY satisfied with the product I can create. It's simple to interface with your computer...take ordinary RCA cables out of the video/audio out of your VCR, input it into the audio/video of the Dazzle unit...the USB cable goes into your USB port, audio out from the Dazzle into your computer line in...launch the Dazzle software and you're ready to roll!

One word of advice though...roll your source video first before engaging the capture and record function of Dazzle...you'll have synch problems otherwise. Dazzle's got basic video editing functions and if you capture at TV resolution (about 12 meg/minute) you get about 50minutes of crisp, clear video on a CD-R...

I'm doing this on a Toshiba 2065CDS laptop, 366mhz/AMDK62 processor, 32meg RAM 4.2 Gb hard drive...and I get great picture quality and great results...

Try it and I think you'll get the results you're looking for...

Tim

-- tim collier (spankit75@hotmail.com), November 15, 2000.

Hardware: Gigabyte ZX7 MB AMD Duron 600 ATI Rage Fury PRO (AIW w/o the TV Tuner)

As far as price goes, this is a fairly cheap set-up, I have Win2k running with the new MMC software from ATI. Works great I can capture VCD Quality MPEG-1 to my hardrive without any dropped frames.

I do need to re-run the stream through an encoder (TMPG) to get a compliant stream, but there is no quality loss.

I do have problems w/ SVCD capture, I assume bus speed etc isnt fast enough as others with this card have reported success.

just my 2c Feste

-- Feste (none@your_buisness.com), December 22, 2000.

Dazzle must have greatly improved their product. I bought one a little over a year and nothing I created was ewven watchable. I returned it to where I bought it and luckily got a refund. The video looked great when it was windowed but when I watched it on a television set it wasn't even watchable. BY this time I had so much money and time invested into this hobby/obsession that I was forced to spend $700 on a hardware/assited card and got much better results. I guess it's true, you do get what you pay for

-- Al McCraw (amccraw@yahoo.com), December 23, 2000.

Hi, I need help! I use my ATI-Radion All in wonder 8500 card to capture from TV and VHS alike with no problem. As long as the VHS was recorded in SP mode it's fine. If you recorded something in LP or SLP, then you get a high pitched buzzing sound.

However, I have a set of videos that I can not get to display well on the computer. Using the same VCR, the picture to the TV is perfect, but the picture to the capture card comes out very distorted. I have tried sending the signal from the VCR through the TV, and sending the TV's output to the capture card. The result is that I still get a garbled picture on the monitor and a clear picture on the TV. This is very aggravating. If anyone has figured out how to overcome this problem them I would greatly appreciate it.

-- Lokas (lokas@hotmail.com), November 30, 2002.

Looks like macrovision copyright protection.

-- A (a@a.com), August 26, 2003.

LOL 1 very expensive video camera that connects to a computer is what we need. (its a joke)

-- =NaJ= (SW64NRJ@hotmail.com), August 30, 2003.