I have some home videos on tape. I want to store them on computer and then copy on CD. Is that possible and if not how do I convert videotapes to CD ?

Same question about slides . I have a few hundreds of them and my slide projector has exceeded its expected life. Time to store these slides on computer then CD if I want to keep all those memories.

Any ideas ?

While I have never done this myself, you can convert them 'fairly easily". Googling vhs to cd and digitize slides generated many many links to both hot-to articles and commercial services.

Good luck

JimJr

By "CD" I'm assuming that you probably mean "DVD". I mean, there's actually a format called Video CD (VCD) but that's quite rare in the US. Anyways...

If you don't have much to convert to DVD, it seems that most photo processing stores offer the service. I've never actually tried it, so I can't comment on the quality. I wouldn't be surprised if it varies between stores (and they probably send it out somewhere else). Anyways, once your footage is on DVD, it should be a simple matter to just copy the file(s) to your computer's hard drive.

If you have a lot of tapes and feel like tackling it yourself, I just happened to see this set of instructions on C/Net. If you do it yourself, remember that when it comes to burning your own stuff to DVD, there are different DVD formats out there and not all of them play on a regular DVD player.

As far as slides go, some of the higher quality flatbed computer scanners come with a transparency carrier that allows you to digitize them in batches. Alternatively, you can check these same photo processing places for transparency conversion, too. That's a little more rare it seems, or at least less well advertised, than video tape conversion. I love the detail and richness of transparencies, though. Stored properly, they should last forever, particularly Kodachrome. Good luck!

It depends on what kind of quality you're trying to preserve, and how much you're willing to spend. A straight conversion could be done really cheap, but you probably won't be happy with the results.

For VHS to DVD (or other digital format) - The hardest part is converting the analog tape to digital (A to D). You could spend tens of thousands of dollars in equipment to do this right. However, since VHS itself isn't the best quality to start with, it doesn't really make sense to try keep everything at such a high quality. There are cheap converters out there (around $100), and it could be done on a regular computer, but the results aren't great if you are concerned about quality. A easier way, if your'e willing to spend a little bit more money, is to get a Mini-DV camcorder with auxiliary inputs, then use the camcorder itself as a A/D converter. You plug your VCR into the camcorder, and either record it to digital tape or run a pass through directly to a computer as an .avi file. If you do record to a computer, you will need one fast enough to capture the video real time, which most modern computers should be able to do. Once it's in digital format, it's failry easy to transfer or convert to other formats. I prefer this method, for one, you will always have a high quality digital backup of the video (on mini-DV tape), and two, you have a camcorder you can use for other things rather than a dedicated video capture board on a computer.

For converting slides, if quality isn't an issue, you can actually project them onto a screen and take digital snapshots of each one. I've actually used this method to transfer old reel to reel movies to a VHS, it turns out ok. The best way of doing it is to scan the slides in a high quality slide scanner, but those are pretty expensive, probably in the thousands of dollars. I'm pretty sure that's the method they use if you get it done professionally. There are some contraptions that are supposed to illuminate the slide and you can attach a camera to it to take pictures, but I'm not too sure how well those work.

You can get inexpensive slide/film scanner for well under $200.

Here is one for right at $100. http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?InvtId=...mp;cm_ite=total
I have used this store before and they are OK. I have read that this is a decent but not exceptional scanner. The resolution is only 1800DPI, but it does work well.

If you go up to $500 or so, you have a LOT of choices. I would look st B&H's web site. http://www.bhphotovideo.com

The problem with slides is the small size (I'm assuming your'e talking about 35 mm slides), so you need a much higher resolution than a normal flatbed scanner is capable of. You can scan it on a flatbed at a few hundred up to a couple thousand dpi, and it will probably turn out ok for your use, but if you're looking for the best quality, then a drum scanner goes up to 10K+ dpi. If there were only a few slides, and you want high quality, it's probably just better to have it professionally done. If you're just copying a lot of family pictures and dont' really care as much, then a regular flatbed will be ok

I'm going to assume 2 things: 1) you have a decent, yet modest budget and 2) you have a lot of videos and slides built up over the years.

You can do this yourself but it's not going to be cheap for good quality. Remember that today's TV's are large enough to make older VHS look really poor. It wasn't intended for 35" and larger screens, so if you want to watch them back, do it on a smaller screen or on your computer where you can control the size.

I would recommend getting yourself a Plextor or TurtleBeach video converter for under $150 typically. Do NOT get a no-name system... you'll pay for it in quality. Even the higher end ones don't necessarily have the best software. Get good hardware that will do the conversion on the fly and without dropping frames. Make sure your own computer is up to the task. It should probably be in the 3GHz Range and 1GB of RAM (not to mention a boatload of disk space).

Film is an entirely other beast. Those slides are probably just as dear to you and are certainly of much higher quality. Don't even waste your time with a high end flatbed scanner like the Epson with slide trays for $500. Go get a dedicated slide scanner. Nikon makes some good ones. The flatbeds just can't get you the detail or contrast or proper lighting for the scan. They might be useful for print scans, of course. The beauty of it is that if you drop a grand for one of these, you can sell it on eBay after the fact (or even pick up a used one, scan your stuff and sell it used again). Something like this with an automatic feeder might be nice if you have a large collection. http://cgi.ebay.com/Nikon-5000-ED-Slide-...1QQcmdZViewItem

If you go to a professional service, pay well for it. Any place that's not dedicated to it and doesn't have answers for how they treat/store the originals for processing and what liability they carry should something horrible go wrong... just don't bother. Going that route will probably make spending a grand on a scanner of your own seem much more palatable, and with that option, YOU get to control the outcome.

Don't forget to get some decent software for mastering your setup. Adobe Photoshop and Premiere come immediately to mind. Your hardware will likely come with some software, but it may not be up to the task as they are often bundled 3rd rate products that are there just to give consumers something to use.

As stated up the thread, you will want to convert your videos to DVD. You may want to simply store the raw AVI files for later conversion to HD-DVD/Blu-Ray which has more storage capacity. You don't want to mess with VCD which can be burned on CD's. Many players can actually view this format, but it's hardly a standard.

Oh, one other suggestion... if you are going to store these digitally, I recommend you do so on a RAID 5 array for real-time storage (or at least mirrored drives). Many modern motherboard systems have built in RAID (but may not have full RAID 5 or 6). I also fully recommend backing up the files either to tape or to archival DVD and put them somewhere offsite like a safety deposit box.

Best of luck. Let us all know what you decide in this thread!

Not much to add to this, I think Massacre hit pretty much all the points. What I will add is:

If you aren't as familiar with photo work on the computer, or aren't planning on doing a lot of it, JASCs Paint Shop Pro will probably be fine. It has 80% of Photoshop's abilites, at 20% of the price, comes with a nice big manual and historically it is easier to use (haven't tried the newest version yet). I use PSP for my image work, and I'm very happy with it. My dad and I have been digitizing old slides and photos and using PSP to do touch ups; I've worked with Photoshop professionally, and I just don't see the advantage to home users who aren't digital or commercial artists as well.

I'm also not sure if it's worth storing the AVIs. It is a pretty raw, and bulky, format. For the resoluation of a VHS/Betamax/etc, converting a standard DVD to the next generation media if and when it is needed will give you the same results. Right now the Blueray vs HD-DVD fight is where VHS vs Beta was in the late '70s. And either one or both of them could end up being the next laserdisc; anyone else remember those things?

True, true.... GIMP is also a nice alternative, and free at that. It definitely depends on what needs to be done. For that matter, Google's Picasa is a very nice tool to organize and do the most common photo "touch ups" in a very quick and user friendly shell. I, in fact, use this for most of my candid photos and such. I only move to more power when I need to do higher-end work as ironraven mentions.

Oh, and on AVIs... I know they take up a lot of room RIGHT NOW, but in 5 years, that will seem like nothing when we are all running multi-terabyte drives. We are almost to the point where we have single drives with terabyte capacities anyway. I built a 2TB RAID 5 array for under a $850. The advantage is that there is no compression. Sure, you could compress and store it under any number of formats... but you DO lose something and when your source is VHS in the first place... Well, I'll let you be the judge, but for archival puposes, I'm sticking with AVI. I figure 10 years down the road, I'll be glad I did. But I can see your point. If you want economy with minimal loss, you could compress those source files. Of course, if you could burn them off to a 50GB dual layer Blu-Ray disk as raw AVI, then that's an option too. I just think that's going to be fairly expensive for a couple of years.

And yeah, for all we know the next format may not be anything like HD-DVD/Blu-Ray.

Hmmm
Thats alot of info to try to digest. Thank you guys. <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Yes, I am talking about 35 mm photo slides. And I have no idea of playing with photos outside the "Paint Brush" that comes with Windows.

I had a scanner a few years ago but it died somehow after my kids scanned a few photos. Time to get a new one I guess. And I prefer to do it myself since some of the slides are sooo old and their frames have become brittle.

Much of the suggested hardware/software is beyond my sphere of knowlege he heh eh eh <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> But it is not too late to learn. I'll check the links.

Smeone told me there is a cable that you can use to hook the VCR to USB port on the PC and load your film . If that is true, then maybe the only thing left is to burn the file from PC to CD. Does anyone know what cable - if any - can be used for this task and if there is any specific software to be used with it ???.

OK, now that we have a better idea of what you're comfortable with and want to do, here's another stab at it. Since it sounds like you'd like to do-it-yourself, here are two other options for getting your VHS stuff onto DVD.

You could buy a combination VCR/DVD recorder console. Most consumer electronics stores like Best Buy should have a model or two. You put your tape in, and a blank DVD, and basically just hit record. I can't comment on the quality since I've never done it, but that's about as easy as it gets.

As an alternative, you can buy an external DVD burner that can actually hook up directly to your VCR, video camera, or even TV. You don't even need a computer to transfer video to DVD. I believe HP is the only one with one now. And you can use it with your PC as a regular DVD burner, too, to back up data or archive stuff. Here's a description of it. If you want to get a sense of how difficult it would be, you can check the online instructions here . A bit more involved than the VCR/DVD combo option, but still quite straightforward.

Regarding the slides, if you haven't already, you may want to read up on how to handle old transparenices. You may inadvertently destroy something if you're not careful or don't know certain tricks to make it easier. However, if you get a scanner and use the included slide carrier, you won't need to worry about fiddling with the slides much, unless they're stuck together or something.

Actually, if they're really important slides and you wanted to keep them as slides as well, you might consider having a professional make new dupes of them if the film is getting really fragile. Or if the film is OK and it's just the mounts that are fragile, you could get them remounted with new ones. Just a thought. Like I said earlier, I really like slides.