Transferring Your Video to Computer and DVD

Like myself, I'm sure you have lots of VHS tapes lying around or stored in boxes. Do you know that humidity; heat and cold can deteriorate the magnetic particles inside the VHS tape? This can destroy your favorite movie, the recording of those family holidays, and your children's birthdays. As VCR's go out the window, DVD players have and will take their place. It's most likely you don't even have a VCR any longer but if you do have one lying around, it's time to convert those old VHS tapes to digital form.

By using your computer you can edit out the boring moments, add music or narration, and make as many copies as you want.

The basic equipment that you will need: A computer, VCR or a camcorder. A device that will get the video in and out of your computer, software to edit, and DVD-burner to copy the video onto a DVD.

Depending on your computer, transferring videotape to a DVD is pretty easy. You may have already what you need.

There are 3 ways you can choose to transfer old videotapes to your computer.

1. Video Capture Card or Device.
This is the easiest and cheapest way; that is to add a video capture card to your computer. You have to have an empty PCI slot on the back of your computer in order to install the video capture card or there are some that will plug into a USB slot which is easier than opening your computer. A video capture card will come with software on a CD which will take you step-by-step through transferring video from your VCR or camcorder to your computer.

2.Using a Video Card
If you have a newer computer, you are probably in luck and have what you need. Look on the back of your computer and find the cord that comes from your monitor. Do you see red, white and yellow plugs that are on the same card? If you do then with an audio/video cable you are able to connect right from your VCR or camcorder to your computer.

3.Using a Video Capture Card
If your computer doesn't have a DVD burner, then the best thing to do is to buy an external DVD recorder. You can plug the DVD burner into your computer by using a USB port. The external DVD will come with software that will take you step-by-step, allowing you to edit and burn with a single device.

You will have to be able to compress and edit the video on your computer so you will need special software to do this. Digital video software helps you in capturing the video from the VCR or video camera to your computer and will let you cut/edit footage or add anything you would like such as narration, music etc. to make that special holiday tape even more precious.

If you have bought a video capture card or device it's more than likely to have included the digital software you need. If not, there are numbers of free video editing programs out there on the Internet.

Hard drive space is very important if you are planning on transfer VHS tapes or your camcorder videos to DVD's; you will need lots of free space. You will probably need up to 12 to 14 gigabytes for an hour of footage you are importing. If you are working with large files you will also need a fast processor and lots of memory, this make the process of transferring and editing videos much faster.

If you don't have enough space, you might check into purchasing an external hard drive. This could also come in handy in backing up other photos and files you would never want to loose.

Whichever option you chose to transfer your videos, the steps from you VCR or camcorder are basically the same. Plug the cords into the output jacks on your VCR or camcorder to the input jacks on your video capture card or DVD recorder; then open your video software. Select the "import" or" capture" option and follow the steps that are necessary in recording your video to your computer.

Now to save the footage to your computer; you want to choose the highest quality that is available. These old videotapes are of poor quality but you need to be careful that you don't degrade the footage more than necessary because of the compression process it has to go through. For your first attempt at this, you may want to find a tape that wouldn't matter to you if you lost the footage.

If you don't have enough space on your computer, then you might consider working with small sections of the video as a time. After you have burned the video on to a DVD you can then delete it from your hard drive, freeing up space for more video.

Once you have transferred the video to your computer, you have the option of editing and rearranging the scenes however you want. Most digital editing video software has already separated your scenes for you so this makes it easier to move things around if you like. You can also delete the boring stuff and delete the dead time. This process is just drag and drop.

Now that you are satisfied with your finish produce, it's time to burn to a DVD. Your software will walk you through the steps to finish this process. You should be given the choice of quality; the best is to limit the video to a single DVD to an hour or less.

You will need a high-quality DVD-R or DVD+R which to burn your video; don't use the rewritable DVD's. You might want to consider making at least one backup copy of every video you burn.

If you would like to skip all this, you can higher a professional but this doesn't come cheap!