Need help with Capturing Video

[Chrisallstar]

Hi,
I'm new to video capturing and editing and need some advice. Basically i want to archive my old tapes of Friends onto DVD. To make this worthwhile i want to get at least 8 episodes onto one disc.

I purchased Adaptec Videooh! DVD which connects by USB2 and encodes video into MPEG2. However the software supplied 'Sonic MYDVD' does not give you many options in regards to capturing the video. Therefore my files sizes are still too large and i can only get about 4 episodes on one disc.
Is there any software i could use with my USB2 Capture device where i can get a greater level of compression?
Or is there any software which will compress my MPEG2 file down to an MPEG2 of smaller size?

Many Thanks,
Chris.

[human01d]

not COMPLETELY sure about this..but pretty sure you can encode it with Dr. Divx(avi) although you have to pay. Or you can use the windows media 9 encoder(wmv), which could be found at the windows website. There are other ways..google is your best friend.

[Alan Mills]

8 episodes = 4 hours. Writable DVDs are single layer. I think you'll be lucky to do this in any reasonable quality. That's if you don't have a problem with Macrovision.

[mrlipring]

just wondering, but where do you stand legally here if you own the vhs, but make a copy of the dvd of it that you obtained elsewhere?

i'd imagine that just circumventing macrovision would be breaking the law, mind you, so since you're only MORALLY, not legally, doing the right thing i'd probably rent the dvds and make backups for day to day usage.

vhs sucks so bad, i was watching some tapes at my girlfriend's today (no dvd player in the living room...) and they're horrible. it's painful...