[Gllug] VCR to computer transfer

[Richard Cohen]

On Thu, 23 May 2002, Steve Cobrin wrote:

> Hi, perhaps slightly off topic but, thought somebody here might be able to
> help :-)
>
> I have some PAL format video's [which were copied from some original 8mm
> movie stock] which I need to edit, and transfer onto computer and then burnt
> onto CD. I only need to copy the video track, there's no audio to worry about.
>
> 1) Is it possible to burn CD's which will play on a DVD player in the US?

Yes.  Burn them as VCD (MPEG1, high capacity) or SVCD (MPEG2, higher
quality/resolution, somewhat lower capacity)

> 2) What's the best way to copy from VCR to computer?

I'd do it in two passes.  Record it to disk first in an uncompressed format,
then transcode it to whichever format you want.  This is from my experience
of trying to make a 'soft TiVo' - which needs real-time, compress
straight-to-disk recording, and is pretty hard to do...

> This is not going to be a frequent event, I really only have these two videos
> to copy.
>
> Is there any difference between a USB based capture card and a PCI based
> card? USB would be siginificantly more convenient for me, but I don't want to
> lose too much picture quality.

I'd want to *see* proof that a USB-based system would work well with Linux.
I know a PCI-based one can - I have one :-)

> any suggestions?

A Hauppauge WinTV[*] Go should do a decent job - it's internal, but it's cheap.
You can get one online for around £40 including shipping...

Plus, you've got a TV card after you've finished with the videos...

> 	-- Steve

Cheers
Richard
[*]  Yes, I know, but they should work great under Linux.



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