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Convert VHS Tapes to DVD

Convert, Edit & Enjoy for Decades to Come

As DVD players become more popular — and VCRs slowly become obsolete — look at your video library. Do you have any precious family videos on VHS? Memories of vacation trips, family genealogy, or just your personal copy of American Idol captured with the VCR? Are you still sending your family and friends home movies on videotape?

Put it on DVD! When it comes to long-term storage, consumer-grade VHS tapes are not your best bet. While they have a shelf life of about 30 years, signs of tape decay can begin to appear in as soon as 5 years. By moving your memories to DVD, you'll gain a longer shelf life for your videos with a better image quality.

You have two good options to make the move:

Have someone else do it.

How many videos do you need to convert? If the answer is only one or two, getting the equipment necessary to do it may not be your best move. Numerous companies will convert your VHS tapes to DVD for reasonable prices; for a low volume of tapes, or if you're concerned about your technical know-how to do it, this may be your quickest and easiest answer.

Do it yourself!

If you're fairly familiar with your computer and DVD burner, converting a VHS tape to DVD can take only a few hours per tape.

System Requirements

System crashes and slow performance plague video editors trying to put together a DVD or VCD on an older PC. Although you may meet minimum requirements for all your equipment, here's what we recommend.

• At least a 1-GHz processor.
• At least a 20GB hard drive, although 40GB is much better. The more the merrier. Allow at least 2.5 MB of disk per minute of video. Allow twice that per minute if you intend to edit the video file.
• If you use Windows, try to have Windows 2000 or XP. The stability factor is a big plus.
• A DV camera or either an internal video capture card with Coaxial, USB, RCA, and/or FireWire connectors or an extrenal device with similar connectors. The connection need will depend on what device you are converting from.
• DVD burner. You can get by with a CD-R if you intend to create VCDs or SVCDs only.
• Video editing software
• Blank DVD or CD media compatible with your burner and DVD player
• Patience

How to Do It:

Put video in your PC

Connect your VCR or camcorder to the 'Analog-in' ports on your video capture device. Exit all other programs open on your computer except the recording software that came with your capture device. This will help your software run faster and minimize 'crash' risks.

Specify a video source within the recording software. Most software and devices offer several options — VHS tape, camcorder, TV show, etc.

Record video to your hard drive — Depending on the source video quality and the DVD quality you hope to make, this will take up a lot of space. Be sure you have it by checking disk space before you start, and moving old files off your hard drive onto CD or DVD backups. Capture your video to your hard drive using the best quality possible with a color depth of at least 24 bits per pixel. The chief limitation here is the speed of your system and size of your hard drive.

Edit your footage

You probably don't want to burn all of your raw video footage. Use video-editing software to cut out the boring parts, focus on the good stuff, and add titles and music. Render your finished masterpiece in a high-quality format, preferably one that's compatible with VCD or DVD burning.

Even if you're burning to VCD, you might want to render out a high-quality version. That way, if you buy a DVD burner later, you won't have to re-edit your movie and re-render it with DVD-quality video.

Convert and burn

Assemble ('Author') the DVD — Most video editing programs will allow you to create menus and prepare your video creations for burning. The burning software that came with your DVD burner will also aid you in this process, if your editor can't.

Can your video editing program render files compatible with DVD or VCD? If not, you'll need to convert your video once you have the movies on your drive.

Once you've converted the video files, you'll need to create the VCD's file structure and menus using a program such as VCDEasy. Once the final VCD setup is complete, VCDEasy generates a CD-ROM image file you can burn to CD.

Burn Baby Burn — Get your masterpiece onto DVD by burning it. Use DVD-R or DVD+R, depending on your burner and DVD player, to make a permanent copy. If you're worried about 'not getting it right,' try a DVD-RW or DVD+RW disc — they can be erased and you can try again with the same disc.

Playback

If you have a DVD burner, you'll obviously want to make DVDs that'll play on any DVD player. When selecting a VCD format, keep in mind that most set-top and computer DVD players can play back the MPEG-1 VCD format. If your software DVD player can't, install an additional VCD player and start watching.

Not as many players support the Super VCD format, but it offers better quality. (With better quality you'll also have less disk space.) If you're buying a new player, carefully check the specs if you want this functionality.

After you've tested your DVD in your player, be sure to either erase your raw original transfer from your hard drive, or back it up to another piece of media if you think you'll want to edit from the raw copy again later (once you've got more editing experience!). This frees up hard disk for other transfers, and will help your computer's overall performance in other applications.

Similarly, always defrag your hard drive after performing a VHS to DVD transfer. Using Windows, shut down all programs and disable your screensaver. Then, click Start and select Programs - Accessories - System Tools - Disk Defragmenter. This may take a while, so go watch TV or get a sandwich while it runs.

Another Way to Do It Yourself

Several companies, such as HP and Sony, have announced external DVD burners designed to make moving VHS tapes to DVD a plug-and-play experience. While these units are also suitable for burning standard data CDs and DVDs, they are more expensive than 'standard' DVD burners for your desktop. However, if you have a lot of movies to transfer or want to avoid figuring out how to get video cards installed on your computer, these devices may provide an easy solution for you.

Stay Tuned

Next we will explore a few video capture devices and actually use them to convert some home movies.

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