For VHS to DVD, which is better VS or Movie Factory?

[ac37174]

Hi,

I just purchased a Leadtek Winfast 2000 expert tuner card which was bundled with Videostudio 8 SE and DVD Moviefactory 3 SE. I am no stranger to Videostudio as I used version 6 previously with my ATI AIW Card. I have read the recommended capture settings for VideoStudio 8 posted on this board, but was wondering just which of the two programs is better for capturing analog VHS and adding titles and chapters to burn to dvd? I want to capture a two hour videotape that is not the greatest (camcorder) quality but without losing any further quality throughout the project. I've always used 8000 variable bit rate, but this always seems to give me only about an hour's worth of room on a DVD-R. Both programs appear to handle the job, but for this project, which of the two would you recommend? One thing I do like is that Moviefactory will show you about how much remaining space you have to fit a project on a DVD disc. If Videostudio has this somewhere within the program that would be great.

Your thoughts?

Thanks,
AC

[Philander]

If your VideoStudio an SE version, I think it does not have authoring tool, meaning you can only render to video files, well since you have DVD MF3, then you can create DVDs. If your VS8 is SE DVD, then you can also create DVDs

VideoStudio and DVD MF are different software, the former is more on editing tools while the latter is for more intuative DVD authoring and burning tool.

With the authoring tool of VS8, it also shows the remaining space you have to fit a project on a DVD disc.

Genrally with 8000kbps video data rate, you can have up to 1 hour of MPEG-2 (DVD) format.

Since Ulead software uses same files for encoding (common files), it doesnt really matter if you use DVD MF3 or VS8 authoring tool, what is important is the DVD burning tools and capabilities where DVD MF3 has the edge over VS8. But for editing.. again VS8 supports more features...

[Ken Berry]

For analog video, you certainly don't need the 8000 bps. 4000 bps will probably still give you about as good quality as you are ever going to get, plus you can fit more on a disc. But you could push it to 6000 bps if you wish, though anything more than that is pure waste.

[heinz-oz]

I fully agree with the previous post, anything over about 4000 to 5000 kbps is a waste of DVD space.
To come back to your original question, which is better? Well, it depends on what you want to do with the footage. Do you want to edit, rearrange clips, delete sequences, add transitions in between the clips, or do you just want to burn whatever you got to DVD? To add chapters and menus and be done with it, you would be better off with MF. If you want to edit the video clips, you would be better off capturing in AVI and use VS to edit and convert to DVD compliant mpeg for burning with MF.

[GeorgeW]

Ulead has a document that helps you pick between MF and VS. It's a link that is titled "Which product is right for me", and it is under the Highlights section at the following link: Ulead Products

[ac37174]

I tried capturing more vhs to MPEG2 files today, using the recommended settings posted somewhere in this forum. I chose upper field first, 4000 variable bit rate. The capture looks good. So I wound up with a little over 2.5 hours of footage, which only needed a little cleaning up in between cuts, and saved the project and saved it as a huge mpeg2 file. Unfortunately, I did this through Ulead Vstudio 8, but wound up with a file way too big for one DVD (7.22 G even with the low 4000 vbr.) Up to editing the file, I could not find a way to see how big the project was (except for total time) before going to the Share/Create Disc stage.

Also, after rendering that huge file, I ran the create disc within a new project with same settings (once again selecting upper field first and 4000 VBR), but it appears to have tried to render it again when I attempted to burn it. When the status says "Converting videos," does that mean it's rendering again or converting to VOB files?

The video looks surprisingly good for 4000 VBR. Should I check deinterlace video or not?

Thanks for all your help