DVD Media Suggestions

[Erik]

I just got an NEC ND-1300A flashed with 1.0B firmware. I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions on media. I am going to be capturing and encoding some home movies that are very important to my family soon, so I want to get it done the best way and in a way that it will last a long time.

What is good, cheap media that I should use with this drive? I am ready to buy the media and want to go really cheap, but I want to make sure that if I burn important video to the discs, that they will last for a very long time.

Also, if anyone has ideas on what I should do to the VHS video once I capture it through S-Video, let me know. I am wondering what is the best way to encode it so that it shows at the highest quality on DVD. I might possibly want to convert the video to 16:9 the best I can. If anyone has done this before, I'd appreciate the help!

I'd just like to get some general discussion going on about what I should do about media and programs to capture and encode video.

 

[alshah]

Eric,

I've used Memorex, Philips, and Verbatim DVD+R's without any problem on my Plextor 708a drive. I have heard good things about TDK's as well. If you go to DVDRhelp.com and do a search with your dvd burner you will find some useful info.

You can also go to this forum on cdfreaks.com

http://club.cdfreaks.com/forumdisplay.php?f=86

I have found a lot of useful info on those sites when I was learning about my Plextor drive.

Hope this helps!!

 

[Erik]

Thanks for the information!

 

[Wilhelm]

Archiving VHS on DVD

The best way to archive VHS material on DVD is to use reasonably priced discs to assure reasonable quality. A cheap medium is likely to have a higher error rate, and the lower the error rate, the better the threshold for longevity. Using the cheapest medium in a Plextor is like poring kerosene in a Porsche--you won't get the performance you paid for.

VHS will not offer 16:9, so don't bother worrying about that. Capture in the highest quality you can. Tip: get a digital miniDV camcorder with analogue inputs so that you can plug the VHS VCR into it to convert to DV at much higher quality than MPEG and save yourself the money you would spend on a capture card. Edit in DV format then create a DVD at the highest rate the software provides. The settings of 1 hour per DVD mean approximately 8-9Mbps, close to the limit for DVD and the highest quality consumer software affords. Trying to get 2 hours on a DVD means compromising the quality, even if the source is VHS. These methods will guarantee the longest life for discs at the highest quality of the originals.

 

[Erik]

Thanks so much. Right now, I have a copy of the latest Adobe Premiere.

If I borrow a DV camera from a friend which is a GREAT idea, you're saying to pull it in Premiere like I would on iMovie on the Macs at school and then work with it from there?

That's actually a great idea. I would use S-Video into the camear and then get the best quality possible. I have FireWire on my computer.

I'll have to see how long my home movies are. Maybe if they were just over an hour, I would tone down the quality just a little to fit it. I mean come on, they're VHS.

Thanks so much about the idea for the DV cam though.

 

[Wilhelm]

Erik,
Yes; capture in DV mode and edit in that format to preserve the best quality. Let the last stage of DV to MPEG-2 compression reduce the quality rather than work in MPEG. Don't throw the master tapes away as Philips suggested in their TV ad. There is enough evidence to suggest video tape will last as long, maybe longer, than optical media. The oldest tapes are 70 years old this year and still play well if it weren't for the fact that the cellulose acetate base film has dried out. That would not happen with "modern" PET films (polyethylene terephthalate) used since the 1960's. Save the master tapes by all means. Record future projects on miniDV cassettes because the quality of those videos at 25mbps is far superior to the compressed 6mbps typical of miniDVD camcorders.

Fitting a bit more than an hour onto a DVD from VHS should be fine. VHS as a format was pretty good at the time, but digital video recording has some significant advantages. The VHS weakness was the format, not the medium. The same S-VHS tape is used for HD video recording.

 

[Erik]

Yeah, I don't have a DV cam, and I don't plan on buying one soon, as I don't really film anymore.

These are just tapes of my grandparents etc. that my parents recorded 10 years ago on VHS. But definitely, I will save the master tapes and upload it in DV and then convert to DVD from there.