VCR for S-VHS or VHS?
 

Hi there,
I am new here and totally new to transferring my VHS to DVD.
I am looking to buy now a video recorder which I will be using to connect to my computer and transform the video to a file.
I looked at the "VCR Buying Guide FAQ" and I can see there different devices for S-VHS but no devices for just VHS.
So my question is, can I play a normal VHS tape with a S-VHS VCR? Is it recommended to use the S-VHS VCR because the S-VHS had better quality?

Thanks :)

S-VHS VCRs play VHS tapes -- and in fact, better than a VHS player does. Hence why the suggested VCR list is made up entirely of S-VHS VCRs, not low-end consumer VHS VCRs.

Also remember to check out the Marketplace forum: http://www.digitalFAQ.com/forum/marketplace/
You don't want to gamble on an eBay deck, even those that claim to be "tested" and "working", as most are either actually broken, or woefully out of maintenance (and are misaligned, dirty, etc).

Thanks very much!

The Panasonic DMR ES35V is such a combo it transfers one on one without a PC, or you use a DVD author program on your PC to "use" the generated files of the DVD wich are already in MPEG2,
why do you still want to use a PC (with capture device) to capture video from the vcr, if you want only MPEG2 for DVD ?
You do get the typical artifacts (distortions) when you capture by composite or s-video connections, which you do not have when transfering/converting one on one like i suggested.

That might be a good idea, but I am wondering if I could still edit the movies on DaVinci or Premiere and if their quality will be good enough if I am using the Panasonic DMR ES35V.
Some of the films are family videos that I would like to edit.

This is easy to answer: quality.

Most DVD recorders, especially Panasonic, have lousy recording quality. It's well known. Most are also attuned only to XP or SP, and nothing else.

You can capture lossless or better-than-DVD MPEG on a computer, process/filter, and encode out to any bitrate. Making a DVD, then H264 from it, often yields lesser results, than had you capture lossless are dual-encode out to MPEG + H264.

While I do use DVD recorders for my own needs (LSI-based JVCs for quality tapes, Zoran based for off-air), many times quality requires that you use the longer ingest/processing method.

No, not at all.

Even ignoring quality loss, editing MPEG is not fun in NLEs. It's a miserable experience, and you'd have to extract MPEG back our to lossless in order to not want to hit the computer with a hammer. MPEG is GOP, not frame accurate like lossless/uncompressed, and the NLE has to constantly render preview. Been there, done that, never again.

If you want to add effects to your capured footage, and you have enough storage space, you should capture uncompressed,
edit, add effects, encode to MPEG2 and author it to DVD.
That way you have maxium quality.
Because i added no effects to my edit, i used the MPEG2 files directly in a DVD-author program, and made in the DVD menu jumps to the different parts of the video footage, for easy access.

If I get it right, I should get a S-VHS recorder, a TBC and a capture card and I am good to go?
Then capturing lossless H.264, edit it if needed, convert to MPEG2 and burn the DVD?

The preferred lossless capture format for VHS/VHS-C/SVHS is to YUY2 Avi media using real-time lossless huffyuv or Lagarith, with huffyuv preferred as more CPU-efficient. h.264 lossless is often used as an archive format but is problematic and inefficient during capture.

I don't understand what you mean by "edit if needed". It will be needed, as you'll quickly discover, and it will need more than just cut-and-join edits. Do yourself a favor: browse the restoration forum here and check out some of the possible surprises you may encounter.

Note: just cut and join will mean that the MPEG material does not need re-encoding, with adding effects you do need to re-encode MPEG material, or you use the uncompressed material to add effects to, and then encode to MPEG after that.

Ok, thanks a lot.