Which is the best, easiest to use, hardware/software for copying videos to VCD or DVD on the computer. Your recommendations and advice would be appreciated.

Thanks

I used and posted this method before under a different topic name but here is the site which explains how to do it, very easy.

VCD to DVD - Click Here!

Thanks UL mate, but I was referring to transferring a video tape to some sort of disc (CD or DVD)... I think your link refers to transferring VCDs to DVDs...

Presumely you need some sort of capture card to link the video to the computer, and then some sort of software to read the video tape and edit it, and then transfer/burn it to some sort of disc...

Your help is appreciated.

Thanks

I have a Panasonic DMR-E50 DVD Standalone Recorder which I connect to my VCR and burn to DVD-RAM. I then transfer it to my computer, edit if needed (I can do basic editing on my recorder) and then use TMPGEnc DVD Author to create menus and burn.

Another method, cheaper, use a video card like ATI All In Wonder which will allow input of video into the computer, then edit and again import into TMPGEnc for DVD or use NERO for VCD.

Hey UL buddy, thanks for your response! I dont have a recordable DVD player, so the second method of buying a capture card appears more convenient. Do you have any more information about the ATI All In Wonder card I need to buy. Presumbly, it will come with software for editing the capture? For transferring it VCD/DVD, I have NERO, but could you give more details of this TMPGEnc DVD Author that you mentioned... Is it free software?

Do any technically-inclined members know more about the ATI All In Wonder video card and TMPGEnc DVD Author software?

Anyone?

Thanks

I've used ATI Wonder All-in-one cards for captures and they are pretty good for VCR captures. When you do a capture from VCR to a digital format you need to capture using a real-time compressor, something like the Morgan M-JPEG codec V3 from http://www.morgan-multimedia.com/m3jpeg.htm is good one to use. Capturing this way creates an AVI on your computer which you then can compress into whatever format you want, like VCD or DVD. They might be some software that lets you capture and compress straight to MPEG or MPEG2 format, but I would imagine you need a pretty powerful computer to-do this in real-time (I think Power DVD Producer does captures in MPEG and MPEG 2).

Best guides I’ve found are on;

http://www.videohelp.com/ (look under capture and convert)

http://www.doom9.org/ (guides)

I’ve also come across TMPGEnc DVD Author which lets you author DVDs once you got your MPEG2 files ready. You can easily create menus and chapters with this software.

Actually you don’t really need the ATI card (although its suppose to be one of the better ones for captures), any graphics card that has video input will do. There is huge amount of open source software which is powerful enough to capture, edit and create VCD and DVDs out there. Again check that videohelp.com site out which has numerous guides on this.

Ali