Hey all, can anyone let me know what is involved in transferring a vhs
tape to a dvd via the pc. What connections are needed and is there a
special progam or converter? I hope I am correct in assuming that it
depends on my video card. Please let me know if you have done this
beforethanks in advance.-J

It's easy. It's so easy, I'm a bit concerned that you had to ask.

Seriously.

I had this same "problem." I went to Best Buy and picked from either 3 or 4
available options. Each option was essentially the same as the others, but
the software that was provided was progressively more robust than the
software at the price point below it. Depending on what you want to do,
there is a price point that fills the need. On a scale of 1 to 4 (where 4 is
the most expensive), we bought the 3. As I recall, I paid about $120.

Basically, the box contains a converter thingie that plugs into the USB port
on your PC, and has a cable (a cable you might already have in your
collection, by the way) that plugs into the camera or the VHS player --
depending on which is more convenient to connect to the PC.

The software will capture the video stream, and provide an editting studio
where you can cut clips, add in fades, perhaps plug in a few snap shots, do
some voice-overs, and add background music and title text. Again, the
various abilities come and go at an initial cost at the check stand.

What you want to ask for at your favorite retailer is a video capture
package. I went to Best Buy because there is one about 2 miles from my
house. You might get a better price at a different store, and a different
selection of packages. The one I bought came from Pinnicle Systems. If you
can tolerate the shipping time, you might get a good price from an online
source such as eBay.

You must have a DVD recorder on your system, and enough free space on the
hard drive to load the tape(s) that you want to transfer.

The software offers some challenges because the menues are not always
intuitive, and the manual seems to go on the premise that you actually know
what you are doing. With a bit of experimentation, you will be able to
figure it out.

In my experience, this has nothing to do with the video card, and is pretty
much entirely driven by the software that comes with the package. Having
said that, if you have a Vista Media Center edition and the physical
connections to accept the camera or VCR, then you might be able to do this
without a trip to Best Buy. My guess is that if you had Vista Media Center,
you would have tried that already ...





"jinxy" <willandsue@rogers.com> wrote in message
news:6746242c-9b3a-44dc-a12d-35bb9a6cf1da@y38g2000hsy.googlegroups.com...

"jinxy" <willandsue@rogers.com> wrote in message
news:6746242c-9b3a-44dc-a12d-35bb9a6cf1da@y38g2000hsy.googlegroups.com...
There are programs and hardware available but it can be a pain is the butt
and tie up your computer and alot of your time. If you have alot of these to
transfer, as I did, get a DVD/VCR recorder. Stick in the tape and DVD...push
a few buttons and let it do the work. You can find these pretyy cheap...ie
last years models, etc. bu doing some searchind around. I paid about $50 for
a Magnavox about 2 years ago. Well worth the cost because now my wife uses
it to record her soaps every day. The only drawback would be that you can't
edit the content of the VHS tape before you burn it to DVD.

"olfart" <olfart65@excite.com> wrote in message
news:68grdqF2sib1tU1@mid.individual.net...

This is a good solution if you don't want to add any special affects --
voice over, background music, title text, chapters, etc.

"jinxy" <willandsue@rogers.com> wrote in message
news:6746242c-9b3a-44dc-a12d-35bb9a6cf1da@y38g2000hsy.googlegroups.com...
no need for special video card unless you want to use one of ATI's all in
wonder cards but probably wouldn't want to buy one just for video capturing.

Might want to check in your area if someone offers this service. If you are
only needing to transfer one tape it may be well worth it to pay 20-30
dollars to have it done.

If you want to do it yourself, explore the time eating hobby of home video
editing, or have multiple tapes you want to transfer it may might be
advisable to do it yourself . You can go to www.newegg.com and purchase a
tv tuner card for pretty cheap (just saw a leadtek one for 10 bucks after
rebate). I've used both an analog capture card as well as a tuner card and
didn't really notice any appreciable video degradation... but of course we
are talking vhs tapes here. you can probably get away with using the movie
maker software that comes with xp sp2.... if you are using vista I think
it's native movie maker only supports digital.

You can also purchase video editing software (pretty good stuff for under
100.00) I personally have used pinnacle, sonic and cyberlink's
powerdirector. Not sure about the new pinnacle but the version 8 although
was very intuitive it was very slow rendering. Sonic was an improvement...
it offers a tape to disk feature and is also fairly easy to use.
Powerdirector has a little more learning curve but has alot more useful
features (and the most expensive I've used so far around 80 bucks) You can
also get adobe premiere elements which is around 100, haven't used this one
yet but is very powerful from what I've been told.

System performace is also a factor. I had been using a 2.4ghz p4 northwood
w/512gb of pc800mhz ram I built about 4 or 5 years ago... rendering for
about an hour of video took around 4-6 hours if memory serves. About a year
ago I built my Core2 duo (2.66 Conroe) w/ 2gb of PC6400 ram and now it takes
less than a half an hour for same length of video. Going to be building my
3.0 quad extreme in the next few weeks... looking forward to see what it
does then.

On May 8, 2:08 pm, jinxy <willand...@rogers.com> wrote:
I used Pinnacle with a Firewire card. Took bloody ages, so once I had
done one tape that was the end of it. I still have a vcr as a stand
under my PC box. :-)