Hello,
As per your email to me, yes the CNET weekend project will work. It will convert your VHS to DVD.
However, I have used Pinnacle Studio for audio/video capture and it is not that easy to use. Or to be more precise, the user interface is that of a video editor vs a personal video recorder. A PVR interface allows you to watch the a/v source like a TV and record while watching.
After reviewing many PVR products (for my upcoming "The Complete Home Theater PC Guide - Everyone's Guide To Building A Home Theater PC" e book), the easiest PVR to use is LeadTek's WinFast PVR which comes bundled with their WinFast TV line of video capture cards. The only drawback we found with WinFast PVR was that while recording, if you wanted to pause to cut out content, the whole video displayed pause right where you paused it and did not allow you to continue to see the feed to know when to un-pause when your content began again. Other than that it was a breeze to setup, configure and begin recording.
We also like Ati's Multimedia Center PVR because of the ease of use (more importantly, you could pause the recording while watching the program, unlike many other PVR products we looked at. WinFast PVR was the only other with that capability), but we had lots of glitches with our particular setup. The video feed would just stop in the middle of recording and while watching/recording, the audio did not match the video (we were using Creative's Audigy 2 Value Card and AOpen AW850 Deluxe audio cards) giving us a type of old Japanese movie affect. However, on playback the audio and video matched up fine. After countless hours with tech support for both Creative and Ati, we gave up and reinstalled LeadTek's WinFast video capture card.
By the way, our system did not have a VIA chipset which apparently causes issues with Ati's hardware and/or software.
That said, I would pass on the Pinnacle Movie Box, Ati TV Wonder products (unless you want to try tackling the issues we had, which may or may not affect you) and go with LeadTek's WinFast TV 2000 line. while watching/recording, the audio did not match the video (we were using Creative's Audigy 2 Value Card and AOpen AW850 Deluxe audio cards) giving us a type of old Japanese movie affect. However, on playback the audio and video matched up fine. After countless hours with tech support for both Creative and Ati, we gave up and reinstalled LeadTek's WinFast video capture card.
By the way, our system did not have a VIA chipset which apparently causes issues with Ati's hardware and/or software.
That said, I would pass on the Pinnacle Movie Box, Ati TV Wonder products (unless you want to try tackeling the issues we had, which may or may not affect you) and go with LeadTek's WinFast TV 2000 line.
When it comes to recording your VHS tapes. You will need the WinFast video capture card and a DVD burner. I would recommend "WinFast TV 2000 XP Expert" edition because it comes bundled with VideoStudio 7 or 8 SE and DVD MovieFactory 2 or 3 SE. VideoStudio is great for editing your recording, while DVD MovieFactory is perfect for burning to DVD. MovieFactory allows you to create great navigation menus.
To actually go into a tutorial on using all these programs in conjunction with each other is to difficult to do on this forum as it requires screenshots. My ebook goes into great detail on this subject and explains aspect ratios to screen resolutions, audio/video codecs and the process needed for achieving the the highest quality recordings.
Hope this helps and if there is anything else I can do to help either post here or contact me via my profile link below.
Take Care,
Shawn Mosqueda
WireSmart LLC