Video capture cards?

arwes

My mom's got a ton of old VHS tapes laying around and she wants them on DVD. Any personal recommendations for a capture card? I know Best Buy has a cheap external Pinnacle thing but it just goes directly to DVD, no chance to edit anything. Which would work for the most part I guess.

itdaddy

loook on pc connections site and tiger direct..i took my old vhs tapes of my family movies
and hooked this converter to my PC and use Nero the nice one and converted first to harddrive image and then harddrive image to dvd took along time but worked.

vhs player --> signal convert --> PC using nero --> harddrive image --> dvd burned movie

it worked great even put sound on my old movies like music

Angie1313

I've only ever seen converters which transfer directly to DVD, kinda like the one you seen at Best Buy. I'm sure someone makes one. You'll prob just have to pay a little more for it though.

tiersten

Is it for her to do the conversion? If so, is she good with computers? The standalone VCR/DVD units that allow copying between the two would probably be a good thing if she isn't.

dynamik

I have an older Pinnacle product that I got just for this purpose. It looks like they have a lot more offerings now: Video Capture and Video Transfer to DVD with Pinnacle Dazzle DVD Recorder and Pinnacle Video Transfer

Unfortunately, I never got my hands on a VCR, so that remains an unfinished project

arwes

I'm going to be doing it for her since she doesn't have the spare cash to spend on one of those Go Video VCR/DVD combo units. I think I'm going to go with the Dazzle Video Creator Plus. I've got a Christmas video of my nephew that's pretty funny, I'll probably put that on YouTube and embarass him (he's 19 now).

arwes

Just to follow up, I got the Dazzle Video Creator Plus yesterday. Apparently you've got to allow plenty of breathing room for that to work well. I had quite a few open processes going and it created a coaster within 3 minutes of starting. Rebooted, closed nearly everything down and it worked fine. BTW if anyone wants to get the less expensive one that only does direct to DVD transfers, Best Buy has it on sale now for $35. The trick is finding a VCR if you don't already have one (I've got a pretty good Sony I bought about 10 years ago). Otherwise I saw that they have a dual deck DVD/VCR combo thing for around $100 too.

aordal

If you're going to spend money might as well get a decent one and turn your machine into a DVR

arwes

aordal wrote: »

If you're going to spend money might as well get a decent one and turn your machine into a DVR

That's a whole other project. Looking at building a MythTV box sometime this summer.

aordal

MythTV is cool and all. But I gotta be honest. Vista Media Center(Ultimate) is super sweet. Plus you can get a remote for <30 bucks that works reeeeeeeeally well with it.

Silentsoul

i hear the hauppauge cards are the ones you want for your mythtv and other Linux type boxes. i think they are supported the best, and have good quality.