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From: John Bischoff on 7 Mar 2010 23:04
Kind folks,
Grand-daughter wants to move content from VHS tapes (commercially produced
copies of very old movies) to personally created DVD media. Primarily to
preserve the ability to play them for another several years, but partly just to
preserve them until the next storage device is invented. Archival sorta stuff.
Both desktop and laptop computers with DVD burners are available for the task.
I have scanned thru a.c.f and didn't find anything that looked like what I think
we need, so now I ask you much more knowledgeable folks for help.
Is there a freeware program that will do this?
How does one deal with an ISO (?) file? (image of a disk)
Is there a problem with protective software stuff?
And how to avoid or nullify it?
Is there a requirement for any additional hardware?
Thanks
John
From: M.L. on 7 Mar 2010 23:58


>Grand-daughter wants to move content from VHS tapes (commercially produced
>copies of very old movies) to personally created DVD media. Primarily to
>preserve the ability to play them for another several years, but partly just to
>preserve them until the next storage device is invented. Archival sorta stuff.
>Both desktop and laptop computers with DVD burners are available for the task.
>I have scanned thru a.c.f and didn't find anything that looked like what I think
>we need, so now I ask you much more knowledgeable folks for help.
>Is there a freeware program that will do this?
>How does one deal with an ISO (?) file? (image of a disk)
>Is there a problem with protective software stuff?
>And how to avoid or nullify it?
>Is there a requirement for any additional hardware?

You'll need a hardware analog-to-digital converter to capture the
analog VHS video to digital AVI or MPEG2 video. Then use DVD authoring
software to author the digital video file into a DVD compilation, then
burn that compilation to a DVD disk. DVD Flick can handle the
authoring and burning.

DVD Flick
Input: 3G2(Mobile), 3GP(Mobile), AVI, AVS, FLV, HDMOV, MJPG, MKV, MOV,
MP4(IPOD,PSP,ZUNE), MPEG-PS, MPEG-TS, MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, NUT, NSV,
OGM, QT, RM, SMK, SWF, WMV/ASF
Output: DVD, ISO, VOB(VIDEO_TS folder)
OS: Win 2000/XP/Vista
www.dvdflick.net/
http://www.videohelp.com/tools/DVD_Flick
http://beginwithsoftware.com/videoguides/dvd-flick-guide.html (user
guide)
From: Kabuki Armadillo on 8 Mar 2010 01:45
"John Bischoff" <mingol(a)roadrunner.com> wrote in message
news:k3t8p59ido37o54nk3onid740notvksbr2(a)4ax.com...
> Kind folks,
> Grand-daughter wants to move content from VHS tapes (commercially produced
> copies of very old movies) to personally created DVD media.
> Is there a freeware program that will do this?
> Is there a requirement for any additional hardware?
> Thanks
> John

I have extensive experience in this realm. My advice: Spend the money to buy
commercial hardware/ software. The grief and aggro you will save yourself
over trying to find some freeware solution is well worth the price. These
days you can buy the hardware/ software for about $80, maybe less.
Furthermore, if no editing is required, you can burn directly from the tape
to DVD, thus saving yourself an intermediate step (i.e. the hard drive).

FWIW, I suggest not bothering with the DVD though and simply recording it to
some sort of digital storage, e.g. a portable hard drive. Optical media such
as DVDs and even Blu ray are likely to disappear within five years. I myself
haven't burned a DVD in over a year. I invested in a dedicated 2nd-hand PC
connected to my 52 inch LCD screen. Everything is then recorded via my
laptop to to a small portable harddrive and I simply run the movies off that
using Media Player Classic (freeware).

HTH,

ML


From: rich on 8 Mar 2010 04:29
On Sun, 07 Mar 2010 23:04:30 -0500, John Bischoff wrote:

> Kind folks,
> Grand-daughter wants to move content from VHS tapes (commercially
> produced copies of very old movies) to personally created DVD media.
> Primarily to preserve the ability to play them for another several
> years, but partly just to preserve them until the next storage device is
> invented. Archival sorta stuff. Both desktop and laptop computers with
> DVD burners are available for the task. I have scanned thru a.c.f and
> didn't find anything that looked like what I think we need, so now I ask
> you much more knowledgeable folks for help. Is there a freeware program
> that will do this? How does one deal with an ISO (?) file? (image of a
> disk) Is there a problem with protective software stuff? And how to
> avoid or nullify it?
> Is there a requirement for any additional hardware? Thanks
> John

Like some of the others I have done plenty of this in the past and if you
have a stand-alone DVD recorder, use that. Connect between VHS player and
recorder with composite cable (usually the red, white yellow phono plugs)
and put it straight to a recordable disk. (re-recordable if you want to
edit the video and not waste disks)

One possibly big problem is if the VHS is 'macro encoded' to prevent
copying. Lots of commercial VHS tapes have this, You can only try and
see. One solution to this is a hardware filter but these can be
relatively expensive.

Assuming you get a result on disk, and you want to edit. Copy the .vob
files to your computer and edit with Avidemux.
http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/
To remake into a DVD with a simple menu use maybe DeVeDe, there is a
setting which avoids re-encoding to save time & quality.
http://majorsilence.com/devede

Final point, do expect any improvement in quality, VHS is equivalent to
the old VCD standard so its ok to use a low quality recording setting on
the dvd recorder, maybe the 3 hrs per disk setting.

--
rich
From: rich on 8 Mar 2010 06:29
On Mon, 08 Mar 2010 09:29:00 +0000, rich wrote:

> On Sun, 07 Mar 2010 23:04:30 -0500, John Bischoff wrote:
>
>> Kind folks,
>> Grand-daughter wants to move content from VHS tapes (commercially
>> produced copies of very old movies) to personally created DVD media.
>> Primarily to preserve the ability to play them for another several
>> years, but partly just to preserve them until the next storage device
>> is invented. Archival sorta stuff. Both desktop and laptop computers
>> with DVD burners are available for the task. I have scanned thru a.c.f
>> and didn't find anything that looked like what I think we need, so now
>> I ask you much more knowledgeable folks for help. Is there a freeware
>> program that will do this? How does one deal with an ISO (?) file?
>> (image of a disk) Is there a problem with protective software stuff?
>> And how to avoid or nullify it?
>> Is there a requirement for any additional hardware? Thanks John
>
> Like some of the others I have done plenty of this in the past and if
> you have a stand-alone DVD recorder, use that. Connect between VHS
> player and recorder with composite cable (usually the red, white yellow
> phono plugs) and put it straight to a recordable disk. (re-recordable if
> you want to edit the video and not waste disks)
>
> One possibly big problem is if the VHS is 'macro encoded' to prevent
> copying. Lots of commercial VHS tapes have this, You can only try and
> see. One solution to this is a hardware filter but these can be
> relatively expensive.
>
> Assuming you get a result on disk, and you want to edit. Copy the .vob
> files to your computer and edit with Avidemux.
> http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/
> To remake into a DVD with a simple menu use maybe DeVeDe, there is a
> setting which avoids re-encoding to save time & quality.
> http://majorsilence.com/devede
>
> Final point, do expect any improvement in quality, VHS is equivalent to
> the old VCD standard so its ok to use a low quality recording setting on
> the dvd recorder, maybe the 3 hrs per disk setting.

typos forever: that last bit should read do *not* expect any improvement
in quality...

looking back at other questions, VLC will play a DVD .iso image directly
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
or
mount the iso as a drive. maybe try
http://www.slysoft.com/en/virtual-clonedrive.html


--
rich
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