transferring & editing vhs videos to DVD

I have a few older vhs videos that I would like to transfer to DVDs and edit them in the meantime. I think I need a file transfer gizmo and some cables and editing software. Can someone give me some guidance on what I exactly need and some recommendations? Any other advice would be appreciated.

 

go and get a video capturing device for your pc, you know the ones that you hook up to the television but in this case hook it up to the vcr and run the capturing program as the video plays then when its done author it and burn it i'd recomend dvd flick to author it and then burn it the authoring process takes a while depending on your cpu speed so be patient leave it running overnight or through the whole day whenever your not using it

 

Thanks for the info - on one of the vhs videos I have different sections - I may want to delete some or do some other editting. At what stage of the process do I do that and with what kind of software?

 

well i never done something like this before but i do know that the software you use will come with the whateve device you purchase to do the job

 

Here's some links for you:
http://www.ionaudio.com/vcr2pc
http://www.computing.net/answers/digitalphoto/vcr-to-pc-to-record-on-dvd/19.html (some of this info is a bit old, but the principle and concept is the same; good for general info)
http://www.ramelectronics.net/howto-pc-vcr.ep

There are devices that include software that you can plug directly in to your computer's USB port (the first link I posted above). It's basically like a VCR that plugs in to your PC. Alternatively, you can buy a TV-Video capture card; you'd plug your VCR in to the capture card, and use the software that came with the card (or something else if you prefer) to capture the data streams (both audio and video) from the VCR and save it on your PCs hard drive (usually as an MPEG file). You can then do whatever you want with the resulting MPEG file. You can edit it, convert/burn to DVD, whatever....
:-D

 

Thanks for all this info - I have ordered the ADSTech capture device. We'll see how that works out.

 

Usual way is to capture the footage first, then edit to get rid of any unwanted parts, and to enhance parts of it if necessary. As for what software, there's plenty out there. Capture cards and other capture devices (usb) often come with some editing software. Or there's Windows Movie Maker built into XP. If you want to make DVDs, I'd recommend Adobe Premiere Elements. I prefer version 2 myself, although I've got the later versions. Version 2 still turns up on ebay for an affordable price.