Am I asking for too much? How is your quality?

[Talosian]

I finally got things set up for copying a VHS to a DVD but I am disappointed with the quality.

The VHS I'm using looks very good on the screen (TV) but the quality on the DVD on SP (the best setting available) is somewhat jerky and not that clear. I thought a digital copy would be at least as good as the VHS. No?

And I seem to be getting a lot of dropped frames. I have a dedicated (no partitions) 80 GB HD, defrag fine. The DMA mode is properly set on the HD IDE/SCSI Port. The HD is fast, etc.

Thanks.

[tiemyshoe]

i think the quality would be worse because the VHS quality is already bad. each time you encode something,the quality usually drops. but i know nothing about it. im just guessing

[nmpaulcp]

What video card and capture software are you using? What format you are capturing in, and just for kicks does the video have Macrovision protection?

[ripit]

Make sure that you use mpeg 2 with your capture card. In fact, I'm fairly certain that thier is a way to make a dvd with out reincoding the mpeg 2 file (dvd uses mpeg 2 so it just has to be put in the proper format with the corect support files). I have never bothered to do it that way as letting nero just reencode has always given me decent results but it is possible.
Also, like nmpaulcp said, does it have macrovision on the video tape? If it does you will have to get a signal booster/filter.

[myke]

i do this and results are as good if not better on a dvd (its hard to say its better and its prolly the same quality but it seems better) i use a stand alone dvd recorder they are very cheap now under £100 in uk if the videos are comercial videos chances are they have macrovision(as pointed out by nmpaulcp )and you will have to remove this(loads of gadgets available try google)
after i have made the recording i edit it in my pc using tmgenc dvd author adding chapters and titles and menus if req then burn the resulting dvd most have been weddings/christenings but also have done some unobtainable dvd releases from vhs to dvd for my collection
hope this helps