Here Today... Gone To Hell!

ok heres the situation i have a 50min documentary on GNR/Robert John it was recorded from Tv in 95/95 it was only ever shown once and never repeated so i know many here have not seen it. i want to change that and offer it for download but i need to know what program will allow me to record from VHS to PC if anybody knows of a free download excellent if not what about the name of a program and how easy is it to do. Any help will be greatly apprieciated.

I'm not the most qualified person to answer that question, but first of all what hardware equipment do you have? Do you own a firewire card?

you sound more qualified than me all i know is its a 80gb compaq with windows XP what is a firewire card if its something that you buy as an extra add on then no all i have is Bluetooth

Well the people I know who transferred videos to their PC all used firewire cards. I don't know if there's any other way to do that.
Let's wait until Will sees this topic, he's an expert  ;) ;D

thanks anyway  : ok:

Anything....I have this show on dvd...do you have anything to trade for it?

If your interested PM me

There's a bunch of different ways to it...almost all of them are expensive. I would say the two main solutions are these:

- VCR > Analog cable > Video Capture card (that you must buy and install yourself) > PC
- VCR > Analog cable > DV Camcorder (it must have an analog IN plug) > Firewire cable > PC

Watch out because some capture cards are not expensive but will not capture in high resolution (for NTSC DVD you need 720x480 and for PAL DVD you need 720x576). Also some cards will only capture in 4mbps (video bitrate), you'd want at least a 6mbps bitrate, 8 if possible. Prices vary from countries to other countries, from stores to stores, etc. Look thoroughly before you buy anything to make sure it will work on your computer.

The software is usually included with your capture card. The advantage of the DV camcorder solution is that you can plug it in directly into your PC and voila! After it's done you can modify your MPEG file with TMPGEnc and author your DVD with TMPGEnc DVD Author, DVDLab, etc.

I actually do have a VHS to DVD transfer of the video you're talking about. The picture and sound quality is not perfect but is good nonetheless. Maybe your VHS is the lowest generation (in this case the transfer would be very interesting).

what sort of price are you looking at when you say expensive 70euros 100euros more. The copy i have is a good original copy direct from tv so it may transfer well and can you use this equipment to transfer Camcorder movies if so i mght get me old man to go halves. Thanks for you help Will

Yeah you can transfer DV camcorder movies as well. Like I said, you need a camcorder with an "analog IN" plug.

If you already have a DV camcorder, you don't have to pay anything really, besides cable (20-30 euros) since your computer should already have a Firewire IN plug (check to make sure).
We're talking about 85$ if you go with the capture card option: you can find a good Pinnacle here (it comes with Pinnacle Studio!!): http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=188410&Sku=P121-8046&SRCCODE=BIZRATE&CMP=OTC-BIZRATE

thank you for your help sorry took so long to acknowledge your help just addicted to GTA SA i will check everything out and see what i can do cheers