Converting VHS -> Mpeg....How?!

[sccbishop]

Hi,

I have found a load of old home videos (no, not that kind...) that are on VHS. They are about 15 years old and I want to convert them into a digital format (for example mpeg, avi, wmv, etc) so I can store them and play them on a PC. Any ideas how I can do this?

Also, when I have converted them, I'd like to be able to chop them up a bit. For example, one of the tapes is 30 mins long but has three different places on it - could I chop this up into 3 seperate mpegs?

TIA,
Simon

[ErnestM]

Your best (and easiest) option would be to get some sort of analogue to DV bridge (Pinnacle Systems' Dazzle-80, for instance). Plug the video out and audio out into the bridge and the firewire (1394) cable from the bridge into your PC's firewire port.

You could, then, use Windows Movie Maker 2 (free with XP) to capture the video as a DV-AVI file or Windows Media File.

I would recommend AVI and then learn to use MM2 to edit your captures and seperate them out into files.

What kind of kit do you have? (PC - hard drive, RAM, etc). Video capture does take some serious hardware to avoid lockups and freezes.

ErnestM

[sccbishop]

Hi Ernest,

Thanks for that. I figured I'd need some kind of PC card to do the job.

The PC I want to do it on is a P4 2.8 GHz with 512 RAM. Do you think this is enough to stop it dropping frames?

Thanks

[ErnestM]

sccbishop said:

Hi Ernest, Thanks for that. I figured I'd need some kind of PC card to do the job. The PC I want to do it on is a P4 2.8 GHz with 512 RAM. Do you think this is enough to stop it dropping frames? Thanks

You should have little to no issues with that setup. By the way the Pinnacle device is just a plug in "dongle" so you wouldn't even have to crack the box:



Apparently they use USB 2.0 as well but if you can find a firewire one it would be easier to use with MM2...

Good luck. If you get stuck, post back...

ErnestM

[sccbishop]

Ta, will do