[ale] [OT] Videotape Ripping and TBCs

[Jeff Hubbs]

I have a Gentoo/Gnome desktop machine with a Hauppauge PVR-150 card in 
it and I'm set up to rip some videotapes.  I have a fairly recent 
consumer VCR that I'm using the composite and audio line outs to connect 
to the PVR-150.  I actually got this to work.

Given that the objective here is to rip the tapes and actually get rid 
of them, I'd like a *decent* rip job.  I plan to edit things in iMovie 
'09 and burn to DVD.

How important is it that I get hold of a time base corrector before 
attempting this, and can a useful one really be had for tens of dollars 
as opposed to hundreds or thousands?

Also:  by simply redirecting the device output, one can capture a MPEG2 
stream directly to disk but it seems that iMovie can't do anything with 
that.  What do people typically do format-wise to accomplish what I'm 
trying to do?