On Sat March 10 2007, Mick Mearns wrote: > Hi list; > I have some older "store-bought" VHS tapes that I want to convert to > DVD. > Some of them are copy protected. > I own them all, I just want to change from tape to disc. > > Can this be done under Fedora? > What is required? > > I have a video capture card already that has composite or s-video in. > Leadtek winfast 2, BT878 . > Of course my VCR only has composite out. > > Any help/advice would be great. > I am running FC6 and KDE To answer this request would require more than a simple e-mail. You ask if it is possible - that one is simple, and the answer is yes, with qualifications. Your copy-protected tapes are going to be problematic. There are ways to defeat VHS copy protection, but they involve regenerating the sync pulse portion of the video signal, and that is something that I usually do by inserting a piece of hardware called a TBC (Time Base Corrector) between the player and the recorder (in your case, between your player deck and your video card); there may be other ways - one I've heard of but haven't personally tried, is to play the VHS tape through a digital video camera that accepts incoming video and will pass it through to the output (I've heard that this works with some cameras, not all). For non-copy protected tapes, you can use Kino to digitize your tapes into your computer. You will then have to transcode those files to .mpg 2 files which can be done with ffmpeg, and then use one of several DVD authoring programs to author your DVD and write the results back to disk. That's a general description of the process to start your research. I'm sure there are other ways, but, if you start researching some of the above, you will start to get the general idea, and probably discover other methods. -- Claude Jones Brunswick, MD, USA
