Converting VHS to digital

[jjane45]

Quick poll: do you make the efforts to convert old skating (soon-obsolete-)VHS tapes to digital? If so, what's your favorite method?

I am eyeing at VCR + digital camera (just AVI format not DVD, not too picky on picture/sound quality), but really wonder how techie people on this board do it 

[Mr. Fan]

I recently got a refurbished DVD Recorder/ VCR from Heartland America for $119:
http://www.heartlandamerica.com/browse/item.asp?PIN=98433&&DL=HWH2

That worked pretty well to convert a tape compiling my synchro "career".  I was able to dub each year as a separate title, and on years where I had the whole flight put chapter marks at each team.  The recorder made up a menu and let me enter text to label everything and pick the thumbnail snapshot for each title.  You don't have to do it all in one sitting, so I was able to do part of it, and come back later to do more.  You can "erase" mistakes even when not using a re-writable DVD, but it'll still take up space and time on the DVD -- you just don't see it.  Once everything is how you like it, you have to do a "finalize" if you want to watch it on normal DVD players, and then you can't make more changes.

It does have composite-in jacks, so you can hook up another DVD player if you want to combine material from DVDs and VHS tapes.

My other plan was to use a PC video capture card and do editing on my PC, but this was a lot easier to get around to doing.

Mr. Fan

[Sk8tmum]

Plugged the VHS player into my computer; used Pinnacle (my editing software of choice); imported the files; and then edited them. Fixed up the sound, the colour etc. Burned them. Lightscribe to label them.

Our local camera store does a nice job too - give them the tapes, they clean them up and burn them. I just like editing my own, so I can put in menus, cut out stuff I don't want etc.