hi
I am using windows xp + 64MB DDR NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 420 with TV Out. I was told that i could hook up my video player and record old vhs tapes to dvd/cd. I have no idea where to start with cables, etc + do i need a capture card or is the above geforce enough? - any help welcome. thanks in advance.
In looking up your video card, it does not look like it has a "video-in" feature.If that is true, hardware wise you need a capture card, and if you plan on capturing to avi format, a large hard drive. I capture to avi format using the HuffyUV codec, which does help some as it is a compression codec.
The two main CD formats that are used are VCD and SVCD. VCD is not that high a quality. The resolution is fixed at 352 X 240 NTSC or 352 X 288 PAL and they have a fixed constant video bitrate of 1150kbits/s. SVCD has a resolution of 480 x 480 NTSC or 480 x 576 PAL. SVCD generally is of higher quality, but you can fit less time on a single CD.
I myself have created VCDs, XVCDs, CVDs, SVCDs and XSVCDs. Definitely consider SVCDs or CVDs over VCDs, if your DVD player supports them.
There are some capture cards that include software to capture directly to a VCD or SVCD compliant MPEG file. My experience (and the general consensus over at www.dvdrhelp.com, formerly www.vcdhelp.com) is that these programs produce a lower quality MPEG file as opposed to capturing to avi format and then re-encoding to a compliant MPEG file.
I use what may be the most popular capture program; VirtualDub and one of the three most popular encoders; TMPGenc. The two other popular encoders are Cinema Craft Encoder (very good, faster, more expensive and multiple varieties) and Nero. Nero generally produces a lesser quality video than TMPGenc or Cinema Craft Encoder (CCE) and does not have many settings that you can adjust to try to enhance the image.
Many people do use Nero to burn to a video disk format CD (different from encoding.) I prefer to use VCDEasy to burn the compliant MPEG file to CD.
VirtualDub (from www.virtualdub.org) and VCDEasy (from www.vcdeasy.org) are freeware. TMPGenc (from www.tmpgenc.net) is not that expensive $48 U.S. I believe. It does have a trial version that the MPEG-2 support (for SVCDs and XSVCDs) expires after 30 days. I don't remember if the trial version puts a watermark on the file. After 30 days you still have support for MPEG-1 format (VCD.) CCE's Basic, starts at about $58 U.S., the next version up starts at about $2000 U.S.
I searched and found the following links to articles and discussions on this website that may be helpfull:
