Like a lot of others, I have a bunch of VHS tapes that need to be converted to DVD. I also want to tape (is 'DVD' a verb yet?) material off TV, so it seems that a set top DVD-R would be a great solution for me. If I wanted to tape things off tv with a DV capture device, I'd have to move a lot of equipment around. That said--are there any major disadvantages of doing VHS->DVD-R->PC and then edit the MPEG-2 off the DVD-R? Will I have more flexibility in terms of audio/video encoding with a DV device? I've looked around a lot on the web, but can't really find anything too detailed about using this method. Can common video editing programs handle MPEG-2 instead of raw AVI? Thanks.
Couple of things:
1. Are you getting a set-top burner that also has a harddrive? Or only one that can burn to disk?
2. Before authoring any of your tapes to DVD, check around a bit to make sure that a higher quality version doesn't already circulate on DVD. Rather than spending several hours to produce an inferior copy, you can spend 10 minutes burning a disk to trade for the better version.
3. Most editing programs like Vegas Video can't handle mpeg2. For that, you need an mpeg "smart" editor like Womble. However, you'll need to demux the video and audio from the DVD first.
4. You will not have as much flexibility regarding the audio (long explanation required - but that's all I'll say for a basic description of the matter).
5. Check videohelp.com for a tutorial on how to do this stuff.
Topic: Set top DVD-R as capture device (Read 2057 times)