VHS to DVD copying help needed...

I went to office depot's software section and found VHS to DVD software. It comes with hardware that lets you connect a VCR or VCP to a peripheral on one end, then a USB or maybe a firewire port on the other end connects to the computer. I also bought Digital Video for Dummies 4th edition at Barnes and Noble which talks about capturing analog video from VHS tapes and transferring it to digital video on computer. I am doing the same thing of transferring my VHS tapes to DVD, but I don't need that software and hardware. I got a new computer that already has it. I can plug my VCR into my desktop PC's composite or S-video port. Then, using my Roxio media import software, all I need to do is click a capture button on the computer, then the play button on the VCR. The computer won't control the VCR so I have to manually rewind and play the VCR to where I want video captured. The computer is an HP m8000n media center desktop PC.

I used a "Dazzle DVC90 comes with Pinnacle Studio? QuickStart movie making software" that I got from WOOT, I think, and it was very inexpensive. I converted all of my VHS tapes to DVD then "retired" my Sharp SlimCam and the DVC-90 and bought a new 3CCD Panasonic camcorder.

The DVC-90 connects to the computer with a USB cable. I thought the Pinacle software video editing and DVD burning worked fine.

The quality of the video was just ok but then the VHS tape videos were just ok.

..for me anyway. I had lots of trouble with dropped frames using USB capture, I tried a standalone DVD recorder (they're under $70 these days) but I wasn't happy with the MPEG encoding. I finally ended up using my Canon ZR60 camcorder to input analog video & output firewire to my PC. I've had very few cases of dropped frames with firewire. It takes a while to convert to MPEG2 with multiple passes for optimum quality, but if it's saving your home videos for posterity, it's worth the trouble.

I am using the DVDXpressDX2 kit that comes with the capture device to which you connect your VCR and computer. It comes with CapWiz software to use for your capture step and Ulead VideoStudio 9 SE DVD software for the editing and burning of the video once it is in your computer. My computer is a plain vanilla DELL (not a multimedia like some other poster has), that's why I needed the capture device and software. I'm happy with the results, although I had to do plenty of reading the manual and looking at tutorials before I started the whole process. Good luck!

In my particular case, I bought a VCR-DVD recorder combo set at Wal-Mart: MAGNAVOX MWR20V6; this was partly because I do not have a VCR (my tapes all date back from 10 years ago). I dub a VHS tape (or segment therof)to a blank DVD; then I copy the DVD contents to my computer hard drive. Then I convert the original .vob files from the dubbed DVD to .wmv with Windows Media Encoder. Then I import/process/edit the video with Windows Movie Maker and eventually make a new, edited movie to DVD with Windows DVD Maker. I found there were numerous little things you have to take care of to get a good final product. A helpful web site is: http://www.windowsmoviemakers.net/forums/
Good luck and have fun!

I have had a Winfast TV USB II for more than a year now and it does excellent service converting analogue video signals onto my laptop. It also comes bundled with Ulead video factory. Additionally I use TMPenc Authoring for editing and menu creation. You will need a USB 2.0 connection but with the specifications you mentioned I suspect you have more than enough to run this hardware and software.

Most any of the Hauppauge video input cards will work. It comes with software for doing this kind of thing. There are lots of forums dedicated to doing what you want to do with a Hauppauge card.

I discourage using a cheap off-brand card.