markm Posted January 3, 2011 Share Posted January 3, 2011 Is there an easy way to do this? I just found the full set of the burner series tapes sitting in the closet that I had forgot about, hell I dont even own a vcr anymore.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Vigilante Posted January 3, 2011 Share Posted January 3, 2011 They do make a combo VCR/DVD that will do what you want. Don't know of any other way to do it. Maybe there are places that will do it for you for a price. Maybe you may know someone who owns one of these units. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark R Posted January 4, 2011 Share Posted January 4, 2011 They also make a dongle now that allow you to hook up a VCR and connect the dongle to a computer USB port, play it and record the video to a computer hard drive...then burn it to DVD (multiple times if you wish). Last time I saw one was at Office Depot for about $49-79. It will allow you to record all your old VCR tapes to DVD....but you will probably need the DVD burning software too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Posted January 4, 2011 Share Posted January 4, 2011 Look on ebay or amazon, should be able to find a VHS / DVD combo VCR for under 75 bux, maybe even under 50 bux. Transferring them is a snap this way, just pop in the tape, insert a blank DVD disc, press a few buttons and wait till it's done. Repeat as needed. One issue is if the tapes are commercially made with copy protection. If so, these VHS/DVD combos will honor the copy protection code on the VHS tape and not make a dub for you. Not sure if they would have used copy protection encoding on those tapes. Most commercial movie titles will have copy protection depending on when they were made. Also, understand that even after converting to DVD those VHS transfers are NOT going to look as good as that movie DVD you get from NetFlix will on your big flatscreen. It's still VHS quality Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BritinUSA Posted January 4, 2011 Share Posted January 4, 2011 I need to convert some old Hi-8 tapes into iMovie at some point. It's all the video from the last shooting season in England. I've found a gizmo that will allow me to import data into my Mac I just need to find a Hi-8 player that converts from PAL to NTSC. I've found a few sites that will do a transfer, maybe that will be the best bet for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Posted January 4, 2011 Share Posted January 4, 2011 If you have or can get ahold of a Hi8 camcorder with FireWire connectivity it would be a snap to get that footage into iMovie by using the VTR control and import functions in iMovie. Heck, buying one off eBay night even be cheaper than a transfer service. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
markm Posted January 5, 2011 Author Share Posted January 5, 2011 I paid good money for these things just want to be able to use them again, and dont care about quality as long as usable. Have to look at the dual units.....or find a 10 vcr at a garage sale and get the "dongle" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Posted January 5, 2011 Share Posted January 5, 2011 They also make a dongle now that allow you to hook up a VCR and connect the dongle to a computer USB port, play it and record the video to a computer hard drive...then burn it to DVD (multiple times if you wish). Last time I saw one was at Office Depot for about $49-79. It will allow you to record all your old VCR tapes to DVD....but you will probably need the DVD burning software too. The dongle you refer to is what is known as a video capture device. They are typically USB (2.0) nowadays but also available in FireWire interface. Many will work fine on USB 1.0, some will not. TigerDirect is a good place to find a variety of them. http://www.tigerdire...pture%20Devices They all come with software for editing and DVD burning. A basic capture device always requires a software application to manage the capture. They don't operate on their own. You will want to make sure you have at least Windows XP and a USB 2.0 port. If your computer is older and only supports USB 1.0 then you may have trouble with the system dropping out while capturing because USB 1.0 may not pass the data fast enough depending on the device in question. If you are running Windows I recommend the Pinnacle Dazzle device for $29 http://www.tigerdire...8925&CatId=1428 If you are on a Mac you will not need the software that comes with the device as Apple iMovie does the job of capturing and iDVD does the burn back out to DVD. Not all devices will work with Mac but most do even if they don't say so. Also, this process will take a lot longer than the VHS DVR recorder combo does. The video capture device captures the video at real time so first you have to play it, then you have to load it into the editing software, then prep it for DVD burning and then you use the software it came with to burn the DVD (assuming your PC has a DVD-R burner, if not you are shjt outa' luck). Burning a 1 hour DVD can take up to 2 hours depending on the speed of your PC and your DVD burner. Basically you are looking at a several step process and up to 3 hours to convert one hour of VHS to DVD this way. The VHS / DVD recorder method does the job in one pass at the running time of the VHS source video plus a few extra minutes to finalize the DVD disc. Basically a little over an hour per hour of source footage and a pretty simple one step process. In other words, my vote goes to buying a VHS DVD combo because it's a whole lot simpler process :-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Modoc Posted January 5, 2011 Share Posted January 5, 2011 Beware of the $10 vcr from the yard sale. The one that we have just ate a couple of our favorite tapes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Vigilante Posted January 5, 2011 Share Posted January 5, 2011 (edited) Give Craigslist a look under Electronics. You should find something in the Fort Worth/Dallas Metroplex. Edited January 5, 2011 by The_Vigilante Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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