can i capture a VHS VCR thru my capture card hauppauge usb2 and burn my video tapes on the fly with moviefatory 4?
if it can, does it work well or is there a loss in quality on the fly?
any tips on settings to get good quality dvd
burn on the fly from a VHS vcr
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2log
re: burn on the fly from a VHS vcr
Right now, there's no plug-in patch released yet for MovieFactory 4 to support Hauppauge capture cards. You'll have to use the software bundled with your Hauppauge capture device then import it into MovieFactory 4 if you want to use MF4 to author your DVD.
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heinz-oz
The question is not whether MF4 can do it, because it has nothing to do with the conversion from analog to digital. That vital bit is up to your capture card and the power of your PC system. Consider using an internal PCI card over a USB connection because the USB port, even the high speed variety, represents an unacceptable bottleneck in the data transfer chain. Even though MF4 and other programs provide you with a capture plugin for certain capture cards, that does not mean the capture is done in that very program. It will only provide the command structure to facilitate the capture. The power to do it comes from your hardware and its bundled capture drivers.
If your Hauppauge card has a built-in MPEG encoder, like mine......any tips on settings to get good quality dvd
The trick is to choose the "correct" bitrate. Use the highest that allows your program to fit on a DVD without re-coding. MPEG is lossy compression, and the video will degrade if it has to be decoded & re-coded to fit. A bitrate of about 6000 kbps will give you about 90 minutes of video which should be good enough for VHS.
A pure-digital 6000 kbps DVD would have better than VHS quality. However, Digital video has limitations that are different from analog limitations. When you make a DVD from an analog tape, it won't look quite as good as the original tape.
Also, use AC3 audio (MPEG audio is OK if you live in a PAL country). This will allow more space for higher-quality video.
I don't know of any software that does that... but I haven't looked. Stand-alone recorders do it that way.... on the fly.
The advantage of making your DVD later (besides editing), is that you can "author" it. That is, you can add chapters and / or menus. And if necessary, you can re-code it to squeeze it onto the disc.
MPEG encoding takes lots of CPU power. If the CPU gets interrupted or can't keep-up, you'll get dropped-frames or other glitches. This is NOT an issue if your Hauppauge card has a hardware encoder. But with most capture cards, you should perform the MPEG encoding after the video is captured. This way the computer can take it's time, analyze the video first, and optimize the quality. This is called two-pass encoding.