a question or 2...

[faruquehabib]

well, the rig in my sig will be operational very soon, and then it will be time to start some copying. i will be doing dvd backups, and vhs-t0-dvd recordings. however, i don't know the first thing about it. i'm sure the software nowadays is pretty easy and all, but here's my questions:

1st, what software is good? the plextor drive in my sig comes with some decent software i guess...will test it to see. i just need some advice here.

2nd, my 9800pro is not an all-in-wonder. what kind of hardware do i need to transfer vhs to dvd? i guess what it boils down to, is how do i get what is on a vhs onto my hard drive so i can then burn it on dvd.

3rd, what's the difference between dvd-r and dvd+r? which is used most?

thanks for tolerating my noob questions. :D

[pointreyes]

Best Buy actually has the easiest solution but not necessarily the best solution if you want to control what comes off of the VHS to the DVD. Here's that solution: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=1072288051207&skuId=6297143&productCategoryId=cat01041&type=product

Now if you want to have control over the situation then you can use what I'm starting to use: http://www.circuitcity.com/detail.jsp?c=1&b=g&u=c&qp=0&bookmark=bookmark_0&oid=88467&catoid=-10266&m=0

One of the things I have always hated with VHS tapes is all the advertising that you have to fast forward through and all the extras at the end of the tape, especially when the tape is 5 years old advertising something that is no longer of interest. With the Studio 9 system you have the ability to edit VHS recording before burning it to DVD. Plus you build the menus, and stills, etc.

Albeit that the HP system is wonderfully simple I wanted the control.

Your system is impressive but video encoding large VHS tapes could surprise you with disk space. Plus if the encode should hard crash your system you are at a risk of losing data on the RAID0. For video encoding you honestly don't need the super fast r/w properties of the Raptors. I use two drives fully devoted to multi-media work. AV1 (120GB drive) is used copying the data and AV2 (80GB drive) is used for creating the data in the proper format. If one part of the process should crash only the data on one drive is destroyed. I have done very little encoding so I have not had any crashes at this time.

[faruquehabib]

thanks for the tips and links, bro! i've thought about adding another hdd just for the encoding, actually, but that will require me to either get an external hdd, or get a sata pci card or an eide pci card as i am using both sata and all eide controllers on my mobo already. how come the pinnacle is rated so badly there? nevertheless, it looks like exactly what i was thinking of getting.

[pointreyes]

Pinnacle is no match for the highly regarded Canopus but then again the cost of Canopus is so high that it's better to simply try something like Pinnacle first to see if it will work for you. What nice about the Pinnacle kit is that breakout connected to the capture card the goes in the case. Getting the kit at CC makes it nice because if the product does not work for you, you can return product with zero restocking fee or shipping costs. :)

[Hawk]

Canopus cards are $$$$. . . :yikes:

If you are not doing Professional Video Editing, the Canopus is way overkill for you. . .

[faruquehabib]

basically converting vhs movies and some vhs home movies to dvd, and home videos on hi8, vhs-c and editing, then on dvd. can the pinnacle program edit in audio as well?