[TriLUG] VHS Tapes, Digital Video Cameras and DVD Recorders

[Ken Mink]

This is one area where Linux is far behind. The first step would be 
capturing the video to the HD. There are a number of video capture 
cards that work with Linux. Most require kernel tweaking to work. Once 
you have the video captured, you need to master the dvds. dvdauthor 
exists, but isn't the most user friendly app around. There a couple of 
others, but dvdauthor is the leader. Then you'll need to burn the disk. 
Actually, that is probably going to be the easiest step.

I tried to do this with some tapes. For capturing I tried a ATI Radeon 
All-In-Wonder. It required much kernel tweaking and add-ons modules 
just to capture. The video quality was crap. The card worked great on 
the same machine in Win2k. I also tried using a Hauppauge PVR-250 card 
that I bought for building a MythTV box(still in progress). Capturing 
was easy, but it only captured to mpeg.

I have since bought a Powerbook. Oh my. Between a firewire port, iMovie 
and iDVD, I had a DVD made from raw footage off my digital video camera 
in no time. Well, the encoding took a while, but the time it took me to 
master the disk was short. It was incredibly easy to use, yet feature 
rich.

I know you asked about Linux, but I tried and the curve was just too 
steep. For me anyway. I wouldn't suggest this a project for anyone 
other than a seriously experienced Linux user. Windows and OSX are 
better places for a newbie to try this. I hope someone proves me wrong, 
but that is my opinion from my experience.

Ken


On Jun 10, 2004, at 8:27 AM, Jeff Tickle wrote:

> Howdy..
>
> My Dad wants to start a fun little conversion project.  He has a bunch
> of VHS tapes that he'd like to convert to DVDs, plus some stuff he's
> recorded on a digital video camera (not sure of the model... so we'll
> just assume it works with Linux until I find out otherwise.)
>
> Does anyone have experience doing this with Linux?  One thing I'm going
> to have to do is make the entire process as easy as possible.  I 
> haven't
> done much research yet but I just wanted to get word from any of your
> experiences.  The two things I have absolutely no clue how to do are
> take the video from the camera and write video to a DVD.
>
> -Jeff
>
> -- 
> Jeff Tickle <jtickle at jtsoft.net>
> JTSoft.net
>
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