There
are a number of products available to capture the output of a
VHS player into a computer. The quality and results vary, as one
would expect. After trying several consumer-level products, here
are my conclusions.
Belkin
makes a USB device they call the Videobus II. This unit is adequate
as a starting point if you are looking to get your feet wet, but
I was unhappy with both the sync range and the resolution. The
extreme top and bottom of the picture weren't captured properly
and the video was pretty fuzzy.
Note that
Belkin has one
of the worst commercial web sites I've seen. If you search for
the model number of the Videobus (FSU207), you won't find anything.
Search for "Videobus" to see the specs.
Pinnacle
sells two USB video converters. The DVC (Dazzle Video Converter)
80 is very similar to the Belkin unit mentioned above, but
the sync and resolution of the DVC 80 are acceptable. The other
unit is the DVC 150. This is a much improved and upgraded
unit with some additional capabilities. If you install the DVC
150 and have high speed USB 2.0 ports, you should be pleased with
the result.
Unfortunately,
both of the Pinnacle units come with the Pinnacle software. Not
one installation of Pinnacle Studio 8 worked according to spec
- not any version, not on any hardware platform.
Like most
video software, Pinnacle Studio 8 is supposed to cover three main
areas of video processing: capture, editing, and burning. The
basic ability to communicate with the DVC units worked well enough
to capture video to an MPEG-2 file. Editing worked intermittently.
Burning to DVD has never worked properly, producing a wide array
of symptoms and a lifetime supply of plastic coasters.
Pinnacle's
tech support department is better than most and has tried to be
helpful, but ultimately they were unsuccessful in getting Pinnacle
8 to work on any of three different computers, even after the
removal of other software and the reconfiguration of the system
according to tech support's recommendations. (To demonstrate that
it was not a hardware limitation or a software conflict, Pinnacle
Studio 8 was also installed on a 2.4 Ghz system with an Intel
CPU, 1 Gb of ram and nothing but Windows XP installed.)
Basically,
the Pinnacle software just didn't work properly, especially when
it came to outputting the video. It's a darned shame, because
the video editor user interface is quite the best I've seen so
far.
ATI
makes several different television interface devices, which as
a side benefit work very nicely as video capture devices. I use
the All-In-Wonder and the TV Wonder. If you
are considering one of these units, I'd recommend the All-In-Wonder
overall because it has more features, but either would perform
the basic job well. Unfortunately, ATI includes the unacceptable
Pinnacle software.
Given
the limited
success with the Pinnacle software, I use Pinnacle Studio 8 only
to capture from the DVC 150 to an MPEG-2 file. Then I use Roxio
Easy Media Creator™ 7 to edit the video and burn the final
product to a DVD. I don't care for the user interface of the Roxio
video editor - it's more cumbersome to use and somewhat counterintuitive.
But at least it worked, which was a pleasant change. The Roxio
software would really benefit from a tutorial, but Roxio doesn't
provide much in the way of documentation with this version. (They've
even done away with the printed manual.)
A DVD
will hold, at maximum video quality, about an hour of video. Very
few movies will fit into that one hour. Compressing the video
would solve that, but it would also cause additional degradation
of the signal quality. (There is already some degradation from
the process of converting analog to digital.) A decision has to
be made: compress the video to fit on a single DVD and accept
a lower resulting video quality, or split the video onto multiple
DVDs.
If you
decide to split the video, you need to choose where to make the
split. This is more a matter of taste and style than technical
ability. At the risk of stating the obvious, you want to split
the video at a point that won't frustrate you at having to stop
and change disks. The shower scene in Hitchcock's "Psycho"
is an example of where NOT to split a movie. Whatever
video editor you have chosen should be able to cut the second
part of your video to a new project and allow you to burn each
project to a separate DVD. There is your video, parts 1 and 2.
Done.
I've been in contact
with Pinnacle Software (They really are trying, I have to give
them that!) and have received Studio 9. Unfortunately, Studio
9 has the same problems with burning a DVD from an MPEG file that
the previous versions did. Evelyne and I have done a considerable
amount of research on this, and I can tell you that the bug is
limited to burning a DVD from an MPEG file. If you capture or
convert from an AVI file, the process works correctly. There's
also a way to force an MPEG to burn by prepending a bit of their
demonstration MPEG to the front of your video, so I'm pretty certain
that the bug is in the reading/rendering of the MPEG file. I've
passed this info along to Pinnacle, so I expect to see a fix soon.
Commentary:
Depending
on where you live, there may be a legal
problem with converting a VHS tape to a DVD. The RIAA (Recording
Industry Association of America) and MPAA (Motion Picture Association
of America) want you to purchase as many copies of a movie or
audio disk as possible, and at least as many as you have players.
If your child ruins one of your disks or tapes, they want you
to purchase still another copy. What I think of their position
cannot be expressed in polite language, but be aware that they
are trying to make "fair use" and "private use"
illegal and may be succeeding in some places. Time will tell.
I feel
strongly that these kinds of actions by the RIAA and the MPAA
are unethical. They are in effect selling me a product and then
threatening to sue me or criminalize my actions if they don't
like how I use it in the privacy of my own home.
Please
note that while I have strong exceptions to their attempts to
outlaw my ability to use what I have paid for, I do not condone
piracy or theft of intellectual property. I just feel that the
RIAA and MPAA have drawn their line in the wrong place, and I
protest their actions to rewrite copyright law to turn reasonable
consumers into victims of their legal vendetta.
by
Michael W. Cocke
