Posted by Neil - Salem, MA USA on 09/09/05 20:49

"Zooman" <zooman@inreach.com> wrote in message
news:NJWdnWTTwrdc147eRVn-ow@inreach.com...
> Might any of you geniuses know of a gadget or technique that would allow
> this mom to save her precious children's activities recorded when they
> were infants to the more permanent DVD format. I realize that this is
> going from analog to digital status but there must be a gadget or
> technique to do this. The tapes are starting to show wear and I want to
> save these unique home recordings. Thanks, Susie PS. If the Zooman makes
> comments in this forum, ignore him -- he is just my husband! Yuk, yuk.

I'm sure there are multiple ways to do what you want. If you will be
converting just a few tapes and if you will never have occasion to do it
again in the forseeable future, perhaps you could just send your vhs tapes
to a service provider that will do the conversion for you. It will cost
about $35.00 to convert a tape to a dvd disk - add $7.00 for each additional
disk. For example: http://www.videosilo.com/videosilo/index.rsc

You could also get a combination vhs/dvd player/recorder and copy directly
from your vhs tape to a dvd disk. This might cost you $250 for the unit.
For example:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0001EZN52/104-2100563-2515908?v=glance

If you have a computer, you can get an analog to digital converter and
convert the output of a vcr to digital and feed the digital stream into your
computer (via Firewire or USB 2.0). I myself use the Hollywood Dazzle
DV-Bridge, but that is no longer for sale. There are others. For example,
the Pinnacle Studio MovieBox Deluxe 9.0,
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/B00032Q3XS/ref=cm_cr_dp_2_1/104-2100563-2515908?%5Fencoding=UTF8&s=electronics
Once the video is in your computer, you can edit it and then write it out to
a DVD.

A common problem when converting vhs tapes using an analog to digital
converter is that vhs tapes are a terrible source for a video signal. The
only reason why video tapes look OK when we watch them on TV is that the
TV's circuitry stabilizes the (othewise unstable) image. To avoid the
instability problem when converting my vhs tapes to digital, I use a video
converter with a Time Base Correction circuit that "rebuilds" each video
frame from a vhs tape. See: http://www.world-import.com/samar.htm

Neil
Salem, MA USA

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