Converting home videos to DVD

[admin_exported]

Can anyone give advice on the easiest and best way to convert my home videos to DVD.

I have quite a few to convert, so would like to know if there is any equipment, computer

programmes that would make light work of it, perhaps recording faster than in real time.

I no longer have the VHFC camera the pictures were taken on, so they can only be

played on a video player. At the moment I have a standard video player (not recorder),

my current HDD palmcorder and a laptop.

 

[laserman16]

Hi and welcome to the forum. Do you have a HDD/DVD recorder because this is the way I did mine by plugging the video camera into the HDD/DVD recorder and dubbing to the hard drive. I could then edit the video to my satisfaction before burning to DVD.

 

[Anonymous]

If your PC/Mac has a Firewire port I would buy a video converter made by Canopus, it takes analog video in, converts to digital and outputs on Firewire, the quality is excellent!!! I have been using one to convert old VHS-C home movies to digital. I bought mine from the Apple shop, it is expensive (about £190) but the video quality is superb, I tried a cheaper device, Elgato, but it wasn't as good.

 

[ElectroMan]

Doing it via a computer would allow more precise/sophisticated editing (including adding titles, effects, etc) but doing it via a HDD/DVD recorder is probably simpler (just connect the player to the SCART socket or whatever).

The HDD/DVD option is useful as you would have a backup on the hard disk drive. Doing it straight to DVD means you'd have to do it again if the DVD is faulty or there's a blip in the recording; plus you could make multiple DVD copies (a good idea, in my experience!).

Either way, you will have to copy from the tapes in real time.