[legrant]

Hi there,

I'm new to analogue capture and I've been given a stack of family VHS tapes to convert.

I've been reading the site now for a few months trying to learn as much as I can about VHS capture. I've read (lots) of advice but this is my first post. I wondered if someone could give me a couple of pointers on capture:

PC is a standard Intel Core 2 Duo (2.8Ghz), 2GB RAM, 500GB HD running Windows XP.

I bought a Panasonic NV-FS200B S-VHS VCR. It has switchable TCB and S-video out.

The capture card (which I has in the machine) is a WinFast DTV2000H. I can find little information about the unit but the two main chips on the board are:

Connexant DVD-T 2K/8K
CX22702-25
65000907
0618 PH

Conexant broadcast decoder
Cx23883-39
62005585
0603 Korea

I know this may not be the best card in the word but it has an S-Video input.

I also have a Sony DCR-PC9E PAL DV which has passthrough and S-Video input so I can pass the signal into that and capture through Firewire. Obviously I'm not too happy about this as I think I'll lose a bit of quality in the DV process.

I'm struggling with software. I've been playing with Premiere (6 and Elements 10) and VirtualDub but I've not managed to export anything from my PC yet that I've been happy with.

I know VHS is never going to look like DVD but it should look at least as coming out of a machine as it did going in on the capture.

I've looked at many of the guides but some of them seem to be quite old and refer to features in software which no longer exist.

I could go on but any advice on my hardware setup would really be appreciated.

Many thanks,

Lee