GlennJL:

Lawrence, I've downloaded the Movie Classic as you asked. Looking at what I've imported I can see quality difference compared to my original VHS tape viewing it on the monitor. As I had said earlier, I think the SVHS cable I was using in the beginning was some of the problem. Now that I've gone to a quality RCA composite cable it is a little better. Seeing the big difference is when I compare what I've imported from the VHS tape is seen after I've made the movie to DVD and view it on the TV. Play the disc, stop and play the tape. Tape is about 15 to 20% better. Mostly in the clarity. VE7AXO, what is  (or bad conversion codecs),  I have burned 5 test disc trying to figure out what I need to change. If I could just clear it up some. I tried to use the sharpen tool, but that really didn't make things look better. Thanks for all of the help and input, and HAPPY THANKSGIVING To All.. I will keep playing with it......

1. If you have only a VHS source tape, you will not gain anything ito resolution because the resolution is defined by the source material ................. true - however, depending on cable quality and length of runs, you will more often than not find that if you play the VHS tape on a proper S-VHS deck and use the S-video connections to transfer video to the USB710  that the material captured would be slightly better ito colour fidelity/smearing etc ............ especially on longer cable runs.

2. Quasi S-VHS decks (read in effect only a REAL VHS deck with a S-video conversion built in) are notorious for producing garbage video material via the S-video outputs.

3. If you want to compare apples with apples you need view the material on exactly the same viewing instrument with exactly the same settings - in particular - VHS is interlaced so your DVD product should be interlaced as well - as others already commented, DVDs (4.5G space) was intended to only carry about an hour's worth of material at optimum quality - I have been playing with the USBxxx many years now and have been able to produce excellent quality DVDs from analogue material captured via the USBxxx boxes as long as the source material on the tapes were of good quality - I have also produced real rubbish looking stuff from less than optimum source material

4. You are using a tape deck and DVD player to view and compare the supposed same content on 2 different transfer sources - while the tape deck has possibly no picture quality adjustments, the DVD player may have a horde of those and may be set-up to eg display interlaced material as progressive (something that may explain your perceived quality issue on the DVD products)

5.  If you are supplying grainy or bad quality (read not perfect VHS tape) content to the USBxxx box, chances are that you will and must experience a loss in quality -not only on capture but also during the conversion of the picture content to mpeg2 DVD format  - iso the converter codec spending bandwidth on encoding good quality pixels containing relevant picture information, it may be struggling to interpret the snow and low contrast/quality pixels ........................ in these cases I have often found that playing around with the analogue capture picture quality sliders in Studio I could set-up the capture to at least produce close to acceptable results even on DVD.

6. Despite all of the above its pretty simple to remove the capture process from the DVD making process in order to evaluate the DVD production process' ability to produce good quality DVDs - Start a new project in Studio and just dump a lot of photos on the TL - make a DVD with interlaced active and leave the quality setting on auto - go view and evaluate that DVD's quality and see if you are happy with that ................. if you are, then you know you have to look elsewhere for the major loss on your captures

As I said - quality is extremely subjective .......................... " Tape is about 15 to 20% better. Mostly in the clarity" simply does not gel with my experiences with both the equipment and software when the source material is of good quality - that's why I said to start at the very beginning with only measurable parameters - from my experiences I would say I have been able to create DVDs from analogue material with close to 0% loss (my subjective take on it and I am the grand-daddy of all things anal wrt quality video) when properly compared on the same viewing instrument

Why don't you grab a frame from your typical source material in Studio and host/post it here to show the "quality" of the material you are trying to convert - perhaps post a short captured bit too (say 10 seconds worth).

FWIW - there is software available (eg Elecard's StreamEye Tools) to objectively compare the mpeg2 stream the DVD making process produces with the already captured material stream - iow an accusing finger can immediately be pointed at the correct source of the "perceived reduced quality" problem.