How to transfer video cassettes to DVD: the alternative to capture cards
From ArticleWorld
The usual method of transferring video tapes to a DVD is buying a dedicated capture card. Unfortunately, this does have the disadvantage of being quite expensive, and, unless you care about paying your computer's retailer, voiding your warranty.
What few people know is that there are a lot of companies that can transfer an analogue tape to an unedited DVD file format. In fact, many local video equipment retailers will do that, and the price is not very high either.
Steps
- Have someone convert the analogue tapes to regular DVD files. The end-result must be raw DVD data (unedited).
- Using any DVD to AVI software, convert the file you obtained to the AVI file format. Use 720 x 576 resolution if you plan to do any later editing, or 720 x 480 if you want to display the resulting file on NTSC (most TV sets).
Notes
It is important to ask whoever is recording your analogue tapes not to do any editing, and use a high bitrate (4000 Kbps should be the minimum). Expect the end file to be very large though.
You should also note that DVD uses a lossy compression format. While editing, you should use a lossless compression format, because repeatedly saving a file in the DVD's MPEG-2 format will degrade your video's quality.