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[Boogiepop]

So I undertook a massive project as a gift to my folks: converting their VHS collection of family memories and the like into DVDs. The process I went with, which seemed the smartest and most cost efficient, was to get a video capture device. And that part went flawlessly, as I now have the whole bundle of files on my computer.

I apparently underestimated the actual process of getting them onto DVDs, though. Not knowing what I was doing I first just burned some files straight onto a DVD-R, but that apparently won't play on most DVD/Bluray players. So after some research, I downloaded DVDStyler. And that works, but... it's really, really, really slow. Like, if this first test one (which is still poking along, not even close to done) is any indication, this is going to take a horrifyingly long period of time to get all of these DVDs done.

Is there any tricks or alternate methods that won't take several times the runtime of each VHS to convert it to a DVD? (And for what it's worth, since I'm not super familiar with the process: thanks to the way it seems to recommend encoding the thing or whatever, it seems like it can't fit as much as the original file sizes compared to the DVD storage space would lead me to believe. Is it necessary to do whatever it's doing that's taking up the extra space?)

 

[mcfrank]

Assuming when you copied the VHS tapes you didn't encode as mpeg2, you will need to convert them again to burn them on DVD. No way around it if you want to play in standard DVD players

 

[duckroll]

Unless there's some specific reason why you need them to be on DVDs, I would recommend you just encode everything you capture into MPEG-4 AVC, and put them all on a USB drive. If their DVD/BD player doesn't support video file playback via USB, buy them a cheap player that does.

This will save you 600000 hours and you don't have to worry about authoring menus, faulty discs, and a whole lot of other hassle.

 

[Boogiepop]

Assuming when you copied the VHS tapes you didn't encode as mpeg2, you will need to convert them again to burn them on DVD. No way around it if you want to play in standard DVD players

Dang. Yeah, just went with the default for the video capture (got one from Elgato which seemed highly recommended), and apparently that resulted in mp4 files. So I guess this is going to take quite some time.

Thanks for letting me know, though.

Unless there's some specific reason why you need them to be on DVDs, I would recommend you just encode everything you capture into MPEG-4 AVC, and put them all on a USB drive. If their DVD/BD player doesn't support video file playback via USB, buy them a cheap player that does.

This will save you 600000 hours and you don't have to worry about authoring menus, faulty discs, and a whole lot of other hassle.

I'll look into this, thanks.

 

[duckroll]

I'll look into this, thanks.

To give more information: Basically any modern DVD/BD player these days comes with a USB slot and the hardware+software to play videos off external drives. You put all the videos you have now into the drive, plug it in, access it in the menu, and you'll see all the videos there. It's a much better solution than having like a hundred DVDs or whatever in an album. You can use folders to sort content according dates/events/tapes however you want too.