In the past years I have used ATI All-in-Wonder (AIW) cards for this purpose. In the past few years though they have made ViVo (Video In/Video Out) standard on most cards, so you do not necessarily require a AIW/TV Tuner card. I have never had much luck with seperate cards, like the ones from Pinnacle, doing this. Right now I have a AIW that I use as a DVR to record stuff, but that is usally lower quality as it is meant to view on my laptop. Memory has not been the bottleneck as much as disk speed. Ideally you would want a 10/15k SCSI, but that is not practical for most people. In that case at least a 7200 SATA. As CPUs get faster, obviously that meant more data could be processed, but it all gets negated once you hit the slower hard drives. Years back I had no problem CPU wise capturing higher quality video, but the drives just could not keep up and it would end up either failing or the video would skip. Since most of what I wanted was of no real value I ended up just using Windows Media Encoder to do WMV which was fine for my needs. Capturing tapes on the other hand you may want a higher quality though. As for memory, most applications of course we use memory for the buffer, so ideally the more the better. Again it all depends on how you do this. Some programs that allow you to adjust the buffer will obviously benefit from more memory. On the other hand many programs out there are just so basic that it really does not matter. Ideally what Rick has suggested is one of the best methods. Let the dedicated device to all the processing. Then you can transfer the files to a computer and edit them into DVD movie format to your liking. I do not know what Linux offerings there are, but I do know that the latest versions of Nero for Windows offers a really good program for making your own DVDs. My wife brought back a bunch of home movies in VCD format that I was easily able to transfer to DVD using this method. Using Nero's Vision program it will automatically make the menu's and everything for you. You can even capture using this program, but again it is an issue of drive speed=performance. I would suggest taking a look at www.digital-digest.com and their forums. They have quite a few FAQs and links that could answer any questions regarding software, CODECs, formats, etc. Sean Waite -----Original Message----- From: rwh <rwh at visi.com> To: Charlie O <obelin23 at gmail.com> Cc: tclug-list at mn-linux.org Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2007 09:18:10 -0600 Subject: Re: [tclug-list] transferring videocassettes to DVD with Linux I had looked at doing this but ended up using a cheap DVD recorder to dump the tape to DVD. Then I can play with the encoding and the likes later although I'll confess to using Handbrake on a Mac to do the actual format conversions :-) --rick Charlie O wrote: > I want to set up my machine, to be able to transfer the videocassettes > we have on to DVD. > > I know I need a DVD-RW, and Linux should be able to handle that. > > My question is, what kind(s) of video card with video input will work > with Linux? > > And 2 side questions > - how much memory do I need to be able to do this? > - is there anything else I need? > > A video card that works with Windows2000 would also do, but I'd just as > soon use Linux. > > Thanks, > > Charlie > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list [http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list] _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota tclug-list at mn-linux.org http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list [http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.mn-linux.org/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20070125/7a7965d8/attachment.htm