New Person with Questions

[HarveyVT]

Hello all,

I just received an OSD unit from someone who bought it 3-4 years ago and I don't have a lot of time (right now) I can spend to figure out everything about it so I am looking for some input to jump start my venture and make sure this is something I want to spend time (and possibly money) on.

Is there a newer firmware than the 3.33-y.72?

My first goal is to transfer old home movies from VHS to a digital format that I can record on to DVD.  Can someone give me a quick summary of the the best way to do this (maybe different firmware builds?) and if there is any quality loss in the transfer.

Additionally, what additional uses have you guys found for this device.  Is it worth messing around with?

Thanks

[ChadV]

Well, 3.33-y.xx is beta firmware.  The newest stable is 3.33-2.09.  I'm not sure if we still have the changelogs up anywhere.

It is an analog transfer, so there is inherent loss.  You'll want to record at the highest available settings in order to minimize loss.  Note that the USB port is a USB 1.1 port, and thus can cause a bottleneck when recording at higher bitrates.

[heyrick]

It is an analog transfer, so there is inherent loss.  You'll want to record at the highest available settings in order to minimize loss.  Note that the USB port is a USB 1.1 port, and thus can cause a bottleneck when recording at higher bitrates.

That said, as you are coming from VHS tape, you may find the 1500kbps option to be suitable if your source is LP, or 2000kbps for an SP recording.

Though, to be honest, I find 1200kbps to be adequate for LP, and 1500kbps for SP. It gets a bit blocky with fast motion, but VHS is inherently rubbish to begin with...

An alternative, if you have the time and processing power, is to record everything at 2500kbps, then use a video editor (the likes of AVIdemux) to reconvert this recording to a lower bitrate. Because a computer not running in real time has the luxury of looking at past and future frames, plus the option of two passes, you ought to be able to re-encode at around 1400kbps (from 2500kbps) with very little loss in quality. If you opt for quantiser in favour of bitrate, the bitrate will be adjusted to best represent each individual bit of video (according to your chosen quantiser setting).


Best wishes,

Rick.

[Organic Fertilizers]

I'm also new to this, [...advert edited out...] but is AVIdemux a really good video editor? Or can someone recommend another one? Especially one that isn't too hard to understand. Your help would be appreciated!!

[heyrick]

Organic Fertilizers: I'm not sure if you're a real person or an above average 'bot. I suspect the latter, however I've edited out your advertising URL but left the relevant part of your message just in case.

Personally, I prefer VirtualDub, but sadly getting VirtualDub to touch anything that isn't an AVI is... frequently more trouble than it is worth.

There's a rather nice program called "Free Video Dub" which edits MP4 video with a rather sledgehammer approach. It mucks up the timeline somewhat, but it can hack out adverts and such without reencoding (it just rebuilds the file discarding unwanted stuff - blindingly fast!).


Best wishes,

Rick.