VHS to DVD software?

[aokec]

I bought a USB cable with the 3 pronged AV cable on the other side (yellow,red,white).
I don't have software for it though.

I have a MAC and PC, but prefer doing things through the MAC.

Any software that you guys recommend? I went through Amazon and they have the Honestech (4/5 stars, requires a special box) and Roxio (3/5 stars).

Thanks

[xalex0]

The last time I did that, I was using tmpgenc dvd author (on PC only)

[coolspot]

I could not find a good workflow for Mac - at least not with cheap capture hardware and software.

So I used bootcamp, installed VirtualDub, captured to a lossless codec (FFV1 / Huffyuv / etc), then converted the files into MPEG4 using Handbrake in OSX.

If you're going to author a DVD, iMovie and iDVD are fantastic.

The Dazzle Video Creator works VERY good for video capture and only costs 18.00!!!

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=5238925&CatId=1428

Let me know if you have any questions.

You'll need lots of hard drive space - at least 200GB free. 2 hours of VHS with FFV1 encoding is about 50GB. After compressing to MPEG4 it will shrink down to ~2GB.

[JamesA1]

The last time I did that, I was using tmpgenc dvd author (on PC only)

+1 for tmpgenc DVD Author, at least for the older versions. Super reliable, while all the others I've tried crash or freeze at the most annoying points.

I'm not sure you can get your video-USB adapter working unless you figure out where to get a Mac driver for it. But whether you get it working or replace it, you're probably looking at two separate steps performed by two different programs: one to capture video from the VHS input, the second to author the DVD.

Another alternative is to find one of the cheap VHS/DVDR combo units that can copy directly from VHS to DVD. But be aware that most of them won't copy Macrovision-protected tapes.

[adams7]

For Mac I've seen a lot of people recommend Elgato products. They have this product (plus others that might work for additional things): Elgato Video Capture (about $100).
http://www.elgato.com/elgato/na/mainmenu/products/Video-Capture/product1.en.html
I've been considering something like that for my Mac.

I have an older Windows computer with an ATI TV Wonder Pro card (maybe available cheap used) and it works great for recording composite video (VCR etc), S-video, and SD TV channels, but it uses older video formats like mpeg, wmv, those formats are still OK but I'd like to use newer ones. I'll probably not bother writing DVDs, just keep everything on HD.

[DougO]

Check Kijiji for a DVD recorder with HDD. Might be some good deals to be had. Capping in newer formats might be problematic and no cheap solution exists. Hauppage, EyeTV are your best bets. Looking to spend upwards of $1,000 for a new desktop/capping system myself. For VHS/Beta caps been using DVD recorders for 10 years now. Use Womble products for editing the mpegs and Pegasys products for making DVDs or newer softs like Handbrake to encode to other formats. Good luck....