Re: VHS tapes and DVDs

Good point Eric, I didn't even think about that route since the OP seemed
interested in editing. Your right, for the time and effort involved in the
editing and buring, might be easier to live with the commercials. The OP is
in Japan, so finding a cheap VHS/DVD burner combo shouldn't be too hard.
--
James
Orlando (Goofy says "Hey!"), Florida

"Eric Baines" <EricBaines@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:E7C0C730-F5F4-4B90-9630-5A8ACD7D08F5@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
It sounds very defeatist, but my best advice is to forget the PC.

Buy a combined DVD recorder and VHS tape player and do it that way. You
may
be lucky and find one that allows some form of editing - an hour or two of
Googling should help.

There is nothing you can do to improve the quality of pictures or video.
If
the information is not there, you cannot magic it from nowhere. You can do
some processing that sometimes gives an impression that you have improved
the
quality, but in reality, you are still degrading the picture. To do this
on a
standard PC would be hugely time consuming, and I don't know of any
available
software to do it (although there may be).

Even if you succeeded, the best you can do with a PC is to burn to a DVD
in
about real-time plus 50%. So it would be quicker, easier and cheaper on a
combined DVD recorder and VHS player.

Sorry

Eric

"Chrono1st" wrote:

Wow, I am completely and totally overwhelmed by the amount of information
here, it's scarying me. Even the mere act of putting this thread into the
correct discussion group was beyond me. I don't have XP Media Center
Edition, I think it's just the normal edition. Sorry! People in this
section seemed to know a ton about this kind of stuff, so I thought
*maybe*
it was a good place to ask my questions.

What I'd like to do is:
My friend has many, many old VHS tapes, of recorded sports events and
other
things. I'd like copies of his tapes, and told him that since we're going
to
go and copy fourty odd tapes anyway, why not covert them to a better
format?
You know, tapes go bad over time, etc.

So, I'd like to copy these VHS tapes to DVDs. I'd also like to edit them,
to perfectly cut out all the commercials, while leaving the events
themselves
intact. Also, if possible (I have NO idea if it is possible), I'd like to
improve the quality of the videos. So, covert to DVD, cut out all
unnecessary stuff like commercials, and if possible, make even better
quality.

The problem is, I am almost totally computer illiterate. I tried looking
around this forum for the same question, and I found it several times.
Unfortunately, many people were responding to the questions with
acronyms,
which I didn't understand at all. Anytime someone uses an acronym, I am
just
like "huh?" and become confused. Again, sorry.

Can anyone explain this to me, part by part? Please explain as if you
were
talking to a small child, with overbearing amounts of details. I'm
assuming
I'm going to need to buy several different things to do this, but I don't
know what, obviously. Some sort of hardware for turning the VHS into
computer data I'd guess, but I don't have ANY idea what hardware that
would
be, which brands are best, etc. Money isn't so important, I'd rather buy
something high-quality that records the VHS perfectly. Aside from that,
I'm
assuming I'll need some kind of program to actually edit the data once
it's
on my computer (for cutting out the commercials and such). Again, don't
know
which program is best. I've been hearing people mentioning something
called
Movie Maker, but I don't know what that is, or if that is what I want.
Finally, after transfering the VHS to my computer and editing them, I
need to
burn them on to DVDs, right? Of course, again I don't know what hardware
I
need for that. Like before, I'd like to buy the highest quality hardware,
so
the DVDs turn out at the highest quality that they possibly can. Which
brand
would be ideal for this?

I guess you can divide my quest into three parts - VHS to computer,
editing
data, computer to DVD. Any help people can give is greatly appreciated.
Stepping me through it slowly and thoroughly would leave me unspeakably
happy. Thank you all for your time. Also, sorry I wrote such an absurdly
long post..... I guess I wanted to be thorough explaining everything.

Oh, a small thing - I keep hearing that VHS tapes take up crazy amount of
space. Some of these sporting events, even with commercials out, will be
hours long, I'd wager. Is it possible to put the entire event on a single
DVD? Do any sort of "super-DVDs" exist that hold more data or something?

Thank you so much!
From,
Chrono1st


.

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