Is there a program to extract the contents of a VHS tape directly into a DVD compatible format?

Right now i am using ulead dvdworkshop and it gives me a 24 gig file for 2 hours of tape. The thing is that the conversion takes up to 8 hours (to fit it onto a dvd). Is there any program that does this faster or captures directly into a dvd compatible format?

Thanks!

Yes, PowerVCR from Cyberlink. You can choose between various profiles; record directly to mpeg1, mpeg2 and even DVD-compatible mpeg's. (quality depends on your capture-device and VHS-tape off course)

are there any free alternatives? hehe, im a little low on budget right now!

Thanks

btw, i started using powerVCR but I'm having some trouble...

I dont have a video capture card to capture video directly from a VCR, instead, i use the camcorder bridge setup (use the camcorder to bridge the vcr to the PC via firewire).

The problem is that when i use powerVCR and start the video capture it randomly stops the capturing at any given point... i dont know why this is.

Im currently using a p4 1.7 ghz system, with 384 RAM and a 120 gig hd...

any suggestions are highly welcome!

Only use top quality leads and make sure they are plugged in properly. De-frag the HD its saving to and it should be an NTFS formated HD as well.

If you are using trial version of PowerVCR, it allows you to record only upto 2 mins.

man, this sucks...

PowerVCR and Ulead DVDworkshop drop frames like crazy...

i dont think its my system, i am transfering directly into .avi (25 mbps, dropped the whole transfering to mpg thing... just wont work). I use a p4 1.7 ghz, 384 RAM, 120 gig hd 7200 rpms...

Is there any good video capture software that doesnt drop frames like crazy???

this is teh suq...

I didn't experience any frame drops with PowerVCR. I captured nearly 1 GB of MPEG video yesterday & everything is fine.

What capture settings are you using with PowerVCR? (profile)
Have you defragmented your HD?

Well.. i think i figured it out...

Because ulead dvdworkshop sucks at capturing the video directly from the camcorder (i figured it used too much system resources just to run, so it hindered the capture a bit, (always got about 1200 frames dropped for a 80 min tape)), i decided to use the windows movie maker, i tested the whole capture (saw the captured .avi file all over again) and did not find any dropped frames, so im sticking with that...

For mpeg2 conversion, im gonna use TMPGenc... (i've never used it, but heard good things about it). I found out it has a special bitrate calculator, so the video fills up the entire dvd, plus it has batch processing, so i can leave it all day and night (i have about 6 hours that need converting... so...).

I guess thats it...

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An overview of the problem for those who want to know:

I wanted to transfer the contents of a vhs tape to my pc so i could burn it to a DVD

At first, I used my camcorder to bridge the vcr to the pc and capture directly from the vcr while it played, but this gave me alot of dropped frames because when the vcr "tracks" or adjusts the tape, it makes the camcorder send blank signlals to the pc... yup, dropped frames... alot (12000 for about 80 mins of tape).

That was the main prob... So, when i transfered the contents of the vhs tape to the camcorder Digital8 tape and then transfered from the Digital8 tape onto the pc using the camcorder (the usual capturing of DV) that problem was fixed, but still dvdworkshop dropped frames (now, about 1200)... so I changed the capturing software, defragged the HD and presto!

I wanted to capture mpeg2 on the fly to save rendering time, but the quality of doing this just plain sucks... (too many dropped frames, and powerVCR seems to capture less fps than the source tape, so it looks like a cheap vcd.

Anyways, thats what i did... It takes more time to do the same work (transfering from vhs to Digital8 tape and from that tape to pc) but it gets the job done with the best quality.

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Any comments or further suggestions are welcome.

Have a read of this tutorial using DVD2SVCD with CCE, http://forum.cdfreaks.com/showthread...threadid=59489

you will get better results and faster to. No Bitrate calculator needed, it does it all for you.