Transferring Video To PC

Evil Mozza mentioned a couple of weeks ago that he has a load of VHS video tapes that he wanted transferred over onto DVD. Now, there is quite a few DVD/VHS combination units on the market but most don't allow dubbing from one format to another. However, further research would no doubt point out that some of them may offer that ability. This would involve buying another rather clunky unit that would take up valuable space and probably be used sparingly. On top of which a decent quality one could run well over £100.

Anyway, I've found a slightly more elegant solution; totally by accident as it happens. As I was stumbling through the web I came across Blackmagic Design and their USB Video Recorder dongle. A nice, elegant usb solution that uses existing video hardware and records onto PC or Macintosh ready for later storage on CD, DVD or even BluRay with the right burner. The dongle does the encoding legwork so it doesn't take masses of time.

Further delving and I've found a couple of UK resellers that will start selling the product for £59+VAT.when it launches in September. The companies are OneVideo and Holdan Limited. There may well be other USB solutions in a similar vein but I haven't really delved too much further. In fact Camera4Sports carry a similar dongle but I think the encoding is done by the PC rather than the dongle.

A final option which is probably not going to incur much extra cost beyond purchasing some decent length cables is that a fair number of the more recent ATI and nVidia cards have either AVIVO or PureVideo included. A suitably equipped card with video in abilities would make transcoding from VHS a breeze.