Convert VHS to DVD

jwoods · Post by **jwoods** » Fri Feb 01, 2008 4:31 pm

Anyone know anywhere in Helsinki where I can take a VHS video to get it converted to DVD?

In UK everywhere on the High Street seems to do it, but I don't think I've seen anywhere in Helsinki?

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sammy · Post by **sammy** » Fri Feb 01, 2008 4:35 pm

IIRC there's a shop in Lasipalatsi, just along Mannerheimintie opposite Sokos & Posti, that does such things. Reel One - http://www.reelone.fi/.

There could be others, and I haven't used their services so I don't know about the prices etc, but there you go

Jukka Aho · Post by **Jukka Aho** » Fri Feb 01, 2008 4:44 pm

jwoods wrote:Anyone know anywhere in Helsinki where I can take a VHS video to get it converted to DVD?

In UK everywhere on the High Street seems to do it, but I don't think I've seen anywhere in Helsinki?

Many have done that themselves – either by using a computer, a capture card, a video editing app, a DVD authoring app, and a DVD burner, and hours of work spent polishing the end result, or taking the easy way out and using a stand-alone DVD recorder (which doesn’t allow too much tweaking or quality control, but seems to be adequate for many apathetic people who Just Can’t Be Bothered.)

(I think many have too many hours of home video on VHS/Betamax/Video8/Hi8 tapes that they’d be willing to pay the transfer prices to some company.)

Mattlill2000 · Post by **Mattlill2000** » Fri Feb 01, 2008 5:32 pm

Many have done that themselves

I've been thinking of doing this for the longest time and am totally lost. First what kind of hook up do you need to "plug" in the VCR to the computer? I have Nero StartSmart and it seems to have all the editing features but I suppose a "capture card" is needed to convert the analogue signal to digital? Also I have studios etc Sonar by Cakewalk that seem to have video editing capabilities, but have never tried it.....................help

Jukka Aho · Post by **Jukka Aho** » Fri Feb 01, 2008 6:12 pm

Mattlill2000 wrote:I've been thinking of doing this for the longest time and am totally lost. First what kind of hook up do you need to "plug" in the VCR to the computer? I have Nero StartSmart and it seems to have all the editing features but I suppose a "capture card" is needed to convert the analogue signal to digital? Also I have studios etc Sonar by Cakewalk that seem to have video editing capabilities, but have never tried it.....................help

You need a capture device of some sort. There are many different types of them:

Capture / video editing cards (PCI cards that plug into your computer; usually these have a hardware M-JPEG codec onboard)
Analog tv tuner cards with video inputs (again, PCI cards that plug into your computer – not all of them have separate video inputs, though)
USB-based video capture devices (these seem to be a popular option these days... I’ve never tried one myself, though)
And as a more esoteric option, but quite handy if you already happen to own one: some Firewire-enabled DV/D8 digital video cameras can be used as capture devices as well, when connected to a computer using a Firewire cable.

See here for a vast database of various video capture devices and user comments about them. You might also want to take a look at these tutorials, and in here as well.

One great source of information is the rec.video.desktop newsgroup (especially if you do an advanced search of the old messages in that group using keywords that interest you), and alt.video.dvd.authoring is worth a look as well.

Mattlill2000 · Post by **Mattlill2000** » Fri Feb 01, 2008 6:18 pm

Many thanks Jukka Aho! Also that was really interesting about the EEPC.

MagicJ · Post by **MagicJ** » Fri Feb 01, 2008 9:05 pm

I'm definitely not a computer expert but i bought a Dazzle from Pinnacle systems a year or so ago in the UK it was about £30. It was fairly straight forward plugging it all in and capturing the video but it took bloody ages to convert from start to finish. If you only have one video to copy (family video, wedding or whatever) i'd get it done professionaly as the colours are a bit washed out because i didn't have the patience to tweak everything, although the editing function was easy to use.
Still i'm happy with what i achieved and the products and software might be better now.

mCowboy · Post by **mCowboy** » Fri Feb 01, 2008 9:21 pm

or buy a DVDR/VHS in one for €150.

raamv · Post by **raamv** » Sat Feb 02, 2008 10:24 pm

mCowboy wrote:or buy a DVDR/VHS in one for €150.

These have even come down in price to €99 ( saw some gigantti ads recently)..

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