Newbie questions about VHS-C tapes

[res0722]

Hello all,
I am new here and this is my first post. I have reviewed a lot of the tutorials and have Steves book,Guide to PE&PE10.
I have a bunch of VHS-C tapes from the 80,s and 90,s. I want to dowload them to my computer, edit in PE10 and put on DVD's. I don't have the camcorder I shot these on but have an older VCR and the cassette adaptor. I purchased the Roxio easy VHS to DVD hardware and software to download these to the computer. The VCR s-video and composite outputs do not work so I use the RCA outputs. Not sure what the resolution is on these tapes 640x480 or 720x480 ? When I use Roxio it converts these tapes to Mpeg2 at 720x480. When I put the file in PE10, it tells me the the preset is wrong ( I use hardrive, flash standard 48k). I have edited, rendered and bunt to DVD with poor quality. I have also put the file in a project, selected share >avi and saved. Then put file in new project with harddrive preset, edited,renderd and bun to DVD with better results.
Is there a better way to get these tapes to the computer and ? Am I loosing some of quality with this transfer method?

Any help will be appreciated

[momoffduty]

Hi Res & welcome. The Roxio converter uses a USB instead of a firewire. This will produce a lesser quality in my opinion. I use Pyro for conversions and are AVI files. Others here do conversions and maybe someone uses Roxio.

[Peru]

I use the Canopus.
http://www.grassvalley.com/products/advc110
The results vary according to the quality of the original tape and the VCR.
I have found no difference between using S-video and composite or the RCA connections.

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

I use a standard VCR player connected to my PC via firewire through my old Canon SD camera. That camera has a passthrough facility to enable digital capture. Others, as mentioned, use the Pyro or Canopus converters but I didn't adopt that route as I didn't have a lot of VHS material that I wanted to capture. (Yeah, I know. I'm a cheapskate! )

[Chuck Engels]

As Cheryl says, any of the USB converters will not give you very good quality and most are not easy to work with.

The passthrough option that John uses would be good, and also the cheapest way to go. You can find used camcorders with this capability for around $200 (USD) maybe less. Close to the same price as a digital converter, which is probably the best option.

A Canopus Digital converter would be my recommendation, what model would depend on the condition of the tapes.
There are lots of people here that have been through the VHS conversion process, that's how I got started in this myself about 7 years ago.