Video to DVD transfer?

[Celso Alvarez Cáccamo]

Leila,

In MY experience: the easiest procedure for me by far has been a good DVD 
recorder with a large internal HARD DRIVE (my brand is Panasonic, good 
quality). The recorder takes any input: TV, VHS, analog or digital 
camera... Once the recording is digitalized in the DVD-recorder hard drive, 
you can then edit it, create chapters, etc., in order to burn individual 
DVD's. When possible, choose the best output quality (up to 1 hour in a 
regular, one-layer DVD).  If a single event is slightly longer than the DVD 
storage capacity, you may compress it slightly, rather than slicing it.

Then you copy/convert these DVD files into the computer with any of a 
number of freeware utilities. I don't work with MAC, but its software 
should be able to import any video format. Copy protection usually works 
only for commercial VHS and DVD, not for home-made recordings.

To digitalize audio, all you have to do is connect the audio player to the 
DVD recorder and leave the video signal unplugged -- black image. Then you 
convert the .VOB files into audio (WAV) with any utility. My DVD recorder 
allows me to chose between uncompressed audio or Dolby Digital (AC3).

So, unless you have an excellent VHS-player - computer interface (good card 
and software), I would really not attempt to digitalize large segments 
directly in the computer. First, there may be noise (audio and video), 
coming from the computer's internal circuitry. Second, the computer is 
useless or it slows down while you digitalize video in real time, which is 
very CPU-intensive. Third, the hard drive gets occupied with large files. 
Fourth, TV/Video cards handle faulty input (such as that of old video 
tapes) much worse than DVD recorders. Fifth, if electricity or anything 
else fails in the computer, you may lose the entire recording (while the 
DVD-recorder may be buffering and recording it -- if electricity fails, it 
is as you had pressed the STOP button).

In a few words: an external DVD recorder is dedicated -- it is MADE 
specifically for this.  It copies for you while you work in other things.

A video-DVD has this directory structure:

AUDIO_TS (usually empty)
VIDEO_TS (it contains the video, menu, and other files, with extensions 
.VOB, .IFO and perhaps some others I don't remember)

The .VOB files are the video segments.  They are in MPEG-2 format, so some 
video software recognizes them directly. Other software may need 
conversion. Sometimes even copying the .VOB file to the hard drive and 
changing its extension to .MPEG works for editing, though I would only 
recommend it if direct import fails.

DVD's made in DVD recorders may have a protection system by which they 
cannot be directly duplicated, in order to avoid massive copying. But this 
is easy to circumvent: You just copy the .VOB and other files into a 
VIDEO-TS directory created in the hard drive, add an empty AUDIO_TS 
directory and that's it:

MY_DVD:
-- AUDIO_TS (empty)
-- VIDEO_TS (with .VOB and .IFO files)

Now you have the DVD structure that you can re-copy and re-burn.

One piece of advice, if I may:  Also buy an EXTERNAL hard drive for back-up 
of all your digitalized files.

Another thing you should consider: What use are you going to make of these 
DVDs? That is, are you going to convert them to other formats? (MOV, for 
example).  If so, you should take into account the output resolution of the 
MPEG-2 file of the DVD-recorder.  For example, my Panasonic outputs in 704 
x 540 (PAL system), which is a somewhat odd, older resolution (720 x 540 is 
more common). The video editing program should handle these specifications 
in order to avoid distorsions in the output (for MOV, 640 x 480, for example).

Now, if you only want to "mount" the MPEG-2 files in DVD's with a menu (no 
subtitling or editing), then your video software program should be able to 
import them directly without converting them -- less quality loss.

One last point: If your university can do the digitalizations to DVDs for 
free or for a reasonable fee, let technicians do it ;-) .

-celso

At 15:27 14-05-2008 -0600, Leila F. Monaghan wrote:

>What is the best way to transfer old VHSs to DVDs?  I have a new Mac and a 
>clunky VHS and TV but nothing to make them talk to each other.
>
>all best,
>
>Leila
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