Thanks for the reply. I ma afraid that even though our PC is very
new we do not have a video/TV card in it so the option is gone.
Though I expect someone can do it professionally along the lines
of 'transfer your old wedding cine film to VHS' that was around a
few years back!
I have the DVDs of series 1 from PLAYBACK as an insurance policy as
although the vidoes were not played for several years the children
discovered the series 2 years ago and it has become standard
Christmas viewing (nothing else decent on the box etc!!). Not that I
have had time to watch them as I can't just do it in little bursts
and tend to get engrossed….
I am hoping that series 2 comes out on DVD soon so I can sort out
the videos for that as they are getting a little stretched too. I
have been wondering about these DVDs from Memphis Belle but I am not
too sure about them.
I am not sure why the entire series is not out on video/DVD as other
good series such as 'Upsatirs Downstairs' are – why has it been
forgotten?
I have passed my address to Helga so I am hoping for an exciting
letter some time, as are the kids eho want to know 'what happens
next?'
Fiona
— In shiponedingroup@yahoogroups.com, "William Whittaker"
<william.whittaker1@n…> wrote:
>
> —– Original Message —–
> From: "Fiona Hall" <fiona.j.hall@b…>
>
> > I have the complete first series on tape (from the last BBC
showing
> > in 1986) but have you any suggestions as to how I could get it
onto
> > CD/DVD?
> >
> > Fiona
>
> Depends.
>
> If you want series 1 and 2 on a DVD to play through a normal
player to your
> TV, the best way is maybe to buy them on DVD, although I think 2
episodes
> are missing, Cry Of The Blackbird and Bloody Week.
>
> If you prefer to copy your own tapes then probably the easiest way
is to use
> a stand-alone DVD player / recorder, although I have not seen any
discs done
> on them myself I am told they can produce excellent results.
>
> If you want to do this with a computer it will need to have:
> 1 A DVD burner drive.
> 2 The PC needs to be a recent, fast machine with a hard drive
large enough
> to keep at least about 20 – 30 gigs of space free for the
capture / editing
> of the tapes.
> 3 Have suitable capture / TV capture graphics card.
> 4 Have the necessary software (and you have to learn how to use
it).
> I knew very little about all this when I started capturing the
episodes, it
> is a very steep learning curve.
> Some idea of what is involved can be had by browsing this site:
> http://www.videohelp.com/
>
> I found that capturing from VHS to DVD needs tapes that are very
high
> quality to start with. My experiments produced all kinds of
problems and
> mostly produced video that looked bad on DVD although it was
reasonable on
> the original tape. Only the very best quality VHS recordings made
good DVD,
> some were very good, unfortunately my tapes of the Onedin Line are
not good
> enough for DVD.
>
> I found the best trade-off for quality, storage size and reliable
copies was
> to adopt the mpeg file settings I found by experiment which
results in a
> file size of around 500 Mb per episode, this easily fits on a CD-
r. Another
> big advantage is that there are no difficulties with differing TV
standards
> around the world. Any computer anywhere will play them.
>
> This fitted with my idea to preserve the series for myself as my
tapes
> degrade each time they are played, also it allows me to share this
great
> classic with the members of this list who have never seen the
whole story.
>
> The episodes I have encoded will only play on a PC (or Mac) using
the
> Windows media player, (or get the free download of the better
Winamp
> http://www.winamp.com ).
>
> These are NOT DVD quality (and cannot be played using a DVD
player) but look
> ok full screen on small monitors (say 15") Also I am quite happy
with them
> on my 17" TFT computer monitor, although some people would not be
I expect.
>
> My pc has a graphics card that allows it to connect to a TV, the
results on
> this are almost as good as the original tapes.
>
> I just keep hoping one day soon the whole thing will be available
on DVD,
> until then my mpegs will have to do!
>
> Bill.