Very Computer

What kind of hardware do I need to convert my home movies, from
VHS tapes, into MPEG files?  Eventually I'll want to burn these
onto DVDs when those burners are reasonably priced.

Thanks....

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Quote:>What kind of hardware do I need to convert my home movies, from
>VHS tapes, into MPEG files?  Eventually I'll want to burn these
>onto DVDs when those burners are reasonably priced.

>Thanks....

You need some sort of frame grabber.
Most TV analog TV cards can do it.
Many are based on the BTTTV chip series, if you have the kernel
sources installed, have a look in:
/usr/src/linux/Documentation/video4linux/bttv/
perhaps.
There is a CARDLIST.
(perhaps just install the kernel sources for this).
Then perhaps the best thing is to record directly into DivX.
That may however not be possible atm.
I myself am recording from VHS in Windows (there is no Linux driver it seems)
with the Asus 7100 combo de luxe, directly in DivX.
Since the first chipsets for DVD players with DivX capability are already on the
market, it will perhaps be possible for DVD players in the future to play DivX.
The DivX format has much better compression the mpeg 1 and mpeg 2, for a good
qquality movie of more then an hour, you can use a normal CDR.
Conversion between the formats is possible in Linux with transcode.
In windows there are many useful utilities, VirtualDub comes to mind.
With the ASus it is possible to record VHS in DivX at 640x480 at 2250kbps
in real time on a Duron 950 (setting medium speed).

I highly recommend the Iomega Buz. Hardware mpeg compression.
Can be had off E-bay in the $50 range. Comes with a extra SCSI
port. Lots of software. Take a poke around here:

http://www.lysator.liu.se/(getting_started)/~gz/buz/getting_started.html
http://mjpeg.sourceforge.net/

Also be sure to check out tools for VCD, which most DVD players will
play but you can burn with a standard CD burner.

Hope this helps.

BAJ

I've been looking into doing the same, I haven't tried any of this yet
so be warned.

1. Buy a digital camcorder that takes external input and produces
digital pictures viz firewire ( IEEE 1394 ? ). I will be buying a
Digital 8 system that can play my old Hi8 tapes.

2. Get a firewire card in your PC.

3. Install dvgrab and kino to edit it.

4. Not sure ...

Robin

     Well, first you should consider what level of MPEG you
want as a target.  The original "Video CD" format was MPEG-1
at fairly low resolution (I think 352 * 240) and relatively
low bit-rate.  Today's ordinary DVDs are MPEG-2 at a
"moderate" bitrate.  There are some "high bitrate" DVDs out
that are supposed to give better picture, but they are still
MPEG-2.  Then there's MPEG-4 which is supposed to be better
compression than MPEG-2 but at essentially the same resolution.

     Working with an ATI Radeon 64MB DDR VIVO card under
Win98 on an ECS K7S5A with a 950 AMD Duron and 133MHz SDRAM,
saving to a 5400 Maxtor HD, I have found that I can capture
what I believe to be "Video CD" quality MPEG-1 (I can't do
serious comparison testing because I don't have a "Video CD"
to compare it against).

     When I try to capture MPEG-2 at 640 * 480, I get
"frames dropped."  My best guess is that I could get MPEG-2
at 640 * 480, at a ATI's default settings if I replace the
CPU with at least a 1.2 GHz Duron (Morgan core).  But I
haven't tried this yet.  If you are using an Intel CPU, it
could take a substantially faster CPU to accomplish the same
thing.  A 1.5 GHz Pentium 4 might be able to do it, but I'd
be more certain of something closer to 1.8 GHz.  The major
testers (Anand, Tomshardware, etc.) all seem to agree that
the AMD Athlon XP (Palomino) and latest Duron (Morgan) show
substantial advantage over all Pentium family products
(including the Pentium 4) in video and audio encoding --
which was a large part of why I bought AMD.

     There are not many "consumer" external encoders that
will capture 640 * 480 or better MPEG-2.  Most of them are
MPEG-1 and probably 352 * 240 resolution, and around 6
Megabit/sec.

     Another possibility exists if you have a huge amount
of disc space.  In theory, you could do it the "old
fashioned way" and encode raw to the drive and compress
later.  I think that could probably be done at under

is pretty huge.

It may be worth getting the DivX 4 codec from the net
(look for  DivX4FullInstaller.exe ), and go for DivX.

As far as format go, DivX itself will allow almost any format.
Your card may not however.
I just did some stuf in DivX 4 in windows in 352x288.
The results are impressive.
Using the 352x288 also frees you of having to de-interlace.
Regards Jan

Go for OpenDivX, which is preferable for two reasons:

  1. The source code is freely available, which means there's a native
     Linux version; and
  2. It doesn't rely on hacked and pirated codecs from Microsoft and
     Fraunhaufer (however it's spelled).  OpenDivX is a legal
     reimplementation.

As of right now, OpenDivX is roughly as fast as the original (MS and
"Radium") codecs and supports most of the previous versions.

Quote:> As far as format go, DivX itself will allow almost any format.
> Your card may not however.

I can't think of any reason the card would make any difference at
all.  All you need is a graphics card fast enough to render bitmaps at
29.97 or 25fps, which is "any graphics card produced in the past 5
years."

Quote:> I just did some stuf in DivX 4 in windows in 352x288.
> The results are impressive.

DivX (MPEG4, basically) is extremely high-quality.  You can do
constant or variable bitrates; multipass encoding; and a whole bunch
of other things.

--

"I woke up this morning and realized what the game needed: pirates,
pimps, and gay furries."  - Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka

Well, maybe not the card, but the software that comes with it, as in my
case the Asus 7100 TV combo has a pulldown menu with only a few choices.
There is (as far as I know) no Linux driver (have been thinking about
writing something, the Philips digitizer chip used IS mentioned somewhere in
v4l, but, alas, I never wrote a kernel module, and I have no tech data on the
card).
And, important, it works OK in win, so, since the objective is to put VHS on
CDR the objective is reached.
I am very aware of open divx, have a look at linux transcode (via the link
on my page http://www.home.zonnet.nl/panteltje/subtitles/ ), transcode can use
both opendivx and the other one.
Last time I looked 2 pass was not working in transcode, but maybe it does
now.
With the software I wrote (plugin for transcode) you can make compositions,
add subtitles, and even manipulate movies with the main movie in divx or
whatever...
Sound like a plug, but really, as far as I know, there is nothing like it
available, for sure not below 1000$ in windows either?
Recommended player for DivX: mplayer, best thing I have seen (best software
project in Linux) for a long time, good stuff!
Regards Jan

I use the approach that Robin Smith mentions in the thread.

The Linux box I use for video capture has a DV-Wizard Pro firewire
card (made  by Hauppauge) installed.  It is connected by a firewire
cable to a Sony Digital8 GV-D200E edit deck.  The deck can  
play Digital8, Hi8, or video8 tapes and produce a DV stream for
capture, or you can plug in your VCR or other source (laserdisc?)
to the decks AV ports and that will be converted to DV as well.

In Linux I use dvgrab to capture and then the MJPEG tools to
re-scale and convert to VCD compliant MPEG-1.  Then just simply
create a VCD image with vcdimager and burn with cdrdao.

Be ready for v.large files when capturing the DV streams - a 60-70Gb
hard drive is good for about 3 hours of video.  You'll also need
room for the MPEG and VCD image produced.

TTFN, Guy.