bringing VHS tapes into Video Studio

[junentx]

I bought VHS TO DVD to capture my old VHS home movies and create clips and DVDs, but the editing features on that program were very tedious, so I am trying VideoStudio instead.
Honestech's VHS TO DVD came with a VIDBOX capture device The vidbox capture didn't work for me when I tried to capture the VHS tape with Video Studio. Is there a way to make that work?
I also tried to get Video Studio to read the DVD I made with that program, but VS said there were no valid files on the DVD. (there were VOB files on the DVD). Is there a way that VS will read these files--did I do a wrong setup of the capture?

Finally, One option with theVHS TO DVD program is to capture the tape to an intermediate file and edit it (that tedious and primitive editor)--this creates a file with extension of .ilj. Is that a format that VS can read?

If any of these 3 methods will work with VS please let me know the appropriate steps for capture. If not, is there some other program that would convert these tapes to work with Video Studio?

Thanks for your time.

[Ken Berry]

First, we *always* recommend that people use the software which comes with their capture device to capture the video. The device manufacturers often tweak their devices to work only -- or better -- with their own software. Moreover, they will not share the secret with other software makers like Corel, so Video Studio usually either cannot see the device or cannot capture from it correctly.

So my advice would be to capture using the software which came with your device. It will probably have a setting which will allow it to be captured to DVD-compatible mpeg-2, so choose that as the format. I have never heard of the .ilj format, and I am sure Video Studio will not recognise it, but it will of course recognise and accept the .mpg format.

As you have found, Video Studio cannot directly open .vob file either from a DVD. However, there are a couple of ways of going about this. You don't say which version of VS you are using, but if it is X4, then simply right click in the timeline and select 'Insert Digital Media'. A dialogue box will appear which shows all your drives, so you select the one where your DVD is inserted. Then select down to Video_TS, which is where the .vob files are located. Tick the box and begin the import. Or you can copy the DVD to your hard disk and simply rename the .vob files with an .mpg extension since that is in effect what they are.

[dbz2000]

If you are talking about the VHS to DVD from Roxio, then Ken is correct. The software will allow you to capture to several formats of which mpeg-2 is one of them. I have t he same Plug-in and have successfully transferred VHS files into VS3 & VS4. Hope this is helpful. If not, Ken's alternative is also a viable way to get VHS into VS4. I have done it that way successfully in VS3 and I cannot imagine that VS4 would not offer the same capability.

DBZ

[junentx]

Thank you, Ken, for your ideas. I do have version X4 of Video Studio and I would like to try to bring in the DVD file. As a complete novice of VS, I can't quite figure out how to right click on the timeline. I assume that you select the edit function (versus capture or share) of the program and start with an empty project. I see how to select the timeline view versus storyboard, but I see at least 3 major sections of the screen and nothing I recognize as a timeline that gives an option to insert media. In the bottom half of the screen, there are all those tracks and above them the closest thing to a list of times, but when I right click there, the options I get are : "fit project in timeline window", zoom in, out, or to, and grayed out--jump to next or previous segment.


dbz2000: I have Honestech's VHS TO DVD, rather than Roxio's. I will look, but the program seems to be basically made for idiots (I probably qualify) and I didn't see any options for output format, but I will check further.

[junentx]

Ken, I found the Insert Digital Media under the File list. I also did a search on .mpg on my hard drive and found that Honestech had build an .mpg file on the hard drive before writing the DVD, so I just pulled it in. Hurray! Now all I have to do is learn to edit the thing! Thanks for the help.