DVD Video
You may have videotaped birthdays, weddings, dance recitals, holiday gatherings or your child’s first faltering steps in your family and put them aside in a box after viewing them once or twice. The VHS tapes containing some of the cherished moments in your family history may now be deteriorating, gathering dust and humidity, and losing their magnetic quality. It is quite easy to retrieve the family treasures troves by converting the video tapes to DVD. This conversion can actually be done on your personal computer. You may also edit or delete some boring moments from the old recordings and add a few bright touches to the old events with the modern digital technology in form of music, background, narration and so on.
The first way is to transfer the footage via a video card to your computer. For this you need the right cable and hardware. If your computer is the latest model, these additions can be dispensed with in a simple manner. Just look at the backside of your computer and check the cord coming from your monitor. A new computer may be having multicolored —red, white and yellow- plugs on the card. You can directly connect your video camera or VCR with the RCA A/V (audio/video) cable. If your video card has a round S-Video jack, you may use an S-Video cable in stead of the yellow RCA video input for better video images. If your video card has no RCA input jacks, you replace it with a new video card.
The second way, much cheaper and easier, is to transfer the footage through a video capture card or device. You need to add a video capture card. For this you need an empty slot on the back of your computer to install it. If there is no such slot, you can plug the video capture card into an available USB slot. Video capture cards usually come with a software CD which explains the whole process of transferring video from your VCR or camcorder to your computer,
The third way is to transfer the footage through a video capture card. If your computer is not fitted with a DVD burner, the best way is to buy an external DVD recorder. Connect it to the computer through a USB port. The DVD recorder has a built-in video capture technology and can allow you to capture video, edit and burn it to a DVD.
