Mike's Oud Forums

How to convert Video tapes to DVDs ... ?

sydney - 5-24-2006 at 03:53 PM

Hello Fine people,

I have a very nice tapes full of goodies.

Oud and Qanon taqseem and playing. Also Amazing Rare 10 minutes for Naseer Shamma and Said Mansour and much more. But they are all on tapes and I can not upload them for you. How to convert them to DVDs? What do I need to have on my PC for that?

Jameel - 5-24-2006 at 05:12 PM

Emad,

I think the easiest way, if you have a digital camcorder, is to patch through. I do it with my old 8mm videos all the time. My camcorder (Sony PC-101) has an input jack, and I plug my old camera into it (uses the same RCA plugs as a VCR), using a special cable that goes from RCA to miniplug. I then plug my camcorder into my PC using the firewire cable. I use Windows Movie Maker. If you don't have the equipment, you can try this http://www.plextor.com/english/products/ConvertX-AV100U.htm If you only have a couple tapes, take them to a local place and have them transfer them to DVD. I'm looking forward to seeing them!

Good on you Jameelo

sydney - 5-24-2006 at 06:55 PM

Thanks for the tips.

I will be having lots of tapes in the future. My sister has got a channel called "Rotana Tarab" and she records about an hour of good classic arabic music, songs, taqaseem and more. She does not have a DVD recorder so she get them on tapes for me. They are that good that I want to share them with you guys.

At the moment I can produce an audio file but of course seeing is totally different hey?


I will get this hardware and start production right away.

Thanks for your help Jameel.

Stay well brother

Greg - 5-25-2006 at 06:03 AM

Emad,

Does your computer have a firewire port?

Does is have a USB-2 port? (not USB-1)

Let me know what it has and I'll send you a solution. Don't buy any gear, I have a warehouse full of stuff to do this sort of job.

Regards,

Greg

TruePharaoh21 - 5-25-2006 at 10:13 AM

Hey Emad,

I went to Egypt this summer that just passed, and my goodness, I watched Rotana Tarab all day long. I'm not sure how much Om Kolthoum factors into everyones day here, but she is my favorite, by far. And what was awesome was that they would bring a concert for her... every day!

Once at 12:00 PM (noon) and another at 11:00 PM. Needless to say, I restricted myself from doing a lot of things when I went to stay home and watch (while the rest of the family went out to buy stuff or whatever visitors do).

What's also great is that the entire day, they have different sections dedicated to different people. Farid gets an hour, Abdel Wahab gets an hour, I think, etc. It's a gold mine.

Also, every night on the radio, they played rare concerts for Om Kolthoum, and during the day, they'd play rare recordings (well, rare to me) of different singers. For example, they have Abdel Wahab singing this song on the oud called Ya habayib bel salama. Really, magnificent stuff they have there.

As a side note:

I've always been intrigued with the idea of putting videos up onto the computer. I remember asking some people years ago, and they said I needed this whole set up that cost at least $500. I think the firewire thing went for 100 at the time.

As for the USB-2 port, if one had a USB-1 port (which I do), wouldn't it simply be in their benefit to replace it if they wanted to do this video transfer? (I'm not sure if a USB-2 port is the only thing needed, please correct me if I'm wrong).

As another sidenote:

I have so many recordings from various forums that I've been scouring through. Please give me some time to decrease the file size and post them for you. Mike graciously helped (thanks Mike!) with some of them, and posted it under the Professional recordings area as Files from TruePharaoh21.

http://www.mikeouds.com/messageboard/viewthread.php?tid=3712

Please, check them out.

I hope all is well with everyone. I feel as though I have contributed less and less over the years here on the forums, though I do want to change this. I check this site at least 5 times a day (it's like... home). And I thank you all for making it feel that way.

TP21

SamirCanada - 5-25-2006 at 11:33 AM

Welcome back TP... we miss you around here.

I also have a question regarding recording from my satelite dish to my pc. I have all those chanels ( rotana tarab, rotana, mbc, dandana, lbc, future, masria, nile, noursat, art, art movies, abudabi, dubai, new tv sat, NBN, etc...)
I often catch things that I wish I could share with the forrums. There is a program called ahla aghnia Zaman. They had the son of El-Mougi playing oud and singing last week.
Also noursat has every wednesday a 2 hour oriental concert from lebanon.
there's so much interesting stuff. Let me know what I need aswell..
thanks

Greg - 5-26-2006 at 04:46 AM

The subject title of this thread is, "How to convert Video tapes to DVDs." But I think what most folks realy want to do is take analogue video i.e. vhs vcr, satellite settop box etc. and convert it to a format suitable for uploading to the forums.

If you have a dv camcorder and your computer has a firewire (ieee-1394) port, you can easily capture video footage into your computer directly from the camcorder using Windows' Movie Maker. One of the ouput possibilities of Movie Maker is WMV (Windows Media Video) and this is one of the most efficient codecs in terms of quality and data rate.
Many DV camcorders have the capability to act as a converter, analogue -> digital. If your camcorder has this capability, you can connect the output of your analogue device (vcr etc.) by way of the composite video (cvbs) or s-video output into the camcorder and then take the firewire output of the camcorder into your computer for capturing and processing to WMV in Windows Movie Maker (this is what Jameel does).

If you do not have a dv camcorder and/or your computer does not have a firewire port, there are other methods available to you. One is the type of device that Jameel suggested. These devices take an anlogue video input, convert it to a digital format and then feed the data, by way of a USB cable, into your computer. To get reasonable results, you need a USB-2 port. If you have only USB-1, you can add an inexpensive USB-2 pci board to your desktop computer, or a (more expensive) USB-2 pcmcia card to your notebook.
Most of these USB capture devices convert the analogue video into mpeg-1, mpeg-2 or (more recently) mpeg-4. The data rate of DVD quality mpeg-2 is too high for internet streaming purposes (typically, around 8 Mbits per second). However, mpeg-1 or mpeg-4 have sufficiently low data rates to make them suitable for upload. In any case, once you have the footage on your hard drive, it can be converted to any format that suits your purposes. It may be that the best option is to capture at the highest possible quality and then convert to an efficient and low data rate format for upload.

Just as mp3 has become the default standard for audio uploads on these forums, I would suggest that wmv would probably be the best default video standard. There is a lot to commend quicktime and mpeg-4 and realmedia etc. etc., but most folks have Windows machines and will be able to play wmv files in Windows Media Player without having to chase-up special codec plug-ins or non-standard software players.

This has been a very quick and dirty overview of what's possible, I hope it's helpful.

Regards,

Greg

Elie Riachi - 5-26-2006 at 06:02 AM

What you folks need is the all-in-one gizmo. It is a TV tuner/PVR card for your PC. I bought one and it works great. The input can be from a VCR, Video camera, antenna or regular coax cable. You can schedule recordings from any source. The way I have it set-up I pick-up the VCR and Satellite on Channel 3 by coax. The results are amazing. You can record to computer or directly burn to CD or DVD. My advice get one with MPEG-II "HARDWARE ENCODING." I would like to emphasize the HARDWARE Encoding part if you care about using your computer during the recording process. I cut cost by buying the white box instead of retail which meant that I had to download drivers and software besides I had to use my own burning program like Roxio or Powerproducer 2 Gold while the retail version would have come with bundled software. Well anyway, here is the link to the exact one I have and once you install it properly it works perfectly. Remember to get the Hardware encoding: http://www.mwave.com/mwave/viewspec.hmx?scriteria=AA37920

sydney - 5-26-2006 at 07:26 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Greg
Emad,

Does your computer have a firewire port?

Does is have a USB-2 port? (not USB-1)

Let me know what it has and I'll send you a solution. Don't buy any gear, I have a warehouse full of stuff to do this sort of job.

Regards,

Greg


Hello Greg,

I must have missed on all those posts ...

Now, How can I tell the difference between USB1 or USB2?

I guess what I have is a standard USB port that comes with any PC. I am not sure Greg.

Thanks for being near me on this mate.

Thank you all guys for your input

sydney - 5-26-2006 at 07:40 AM

I will check with Greg first to see what I already have and we'll take it from there.

I can not wait to share those unusual shows with you.

You gonna love it.

Stay well

Orahim1 - 5-28-2006 at 09:05 AM

WHy not just buy a DVD recorder/player? They only cost about $150 now and are well worth the money. Then, all you have to do is take the RCA cables (including the yellow, video cable), plug that into your dvd recorder, and record. I transferred many, many vhs tapes to DVD about a year ago that way. It was the easiest way to do it! I still use my DVD recorder to tape TV shows now, etc. I hope that helps.

Greg - 5-29-2006 at 01:52 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Orahim1
WHy not just buy a DVD recorder/player?


That is the easiest way to make DVDs, but if you need to produce video files for uploading to the forums, you need to "rip" the vob files off the DVD and convert them to a much lower data rate format (such as wmv).

Regards,

Greg