Digital Home Thoughts: From VHS to DVD

"A few weeks back, I was trying to tidy up the dumping ground of old technology known as my attic. While digging through this graveyard of old PCs and cables that no longer plug into anything, I found some VHS tapes containing movies I shot years ago. In the spirit of spring cleaning, I decided to put these movies onto DVD...I still had an old VHS deck lying around. But I didn't just stick the VHS tapes I wanted to copy in there; instead, I connected the VHS recorder to the TV and recorded and played back some TV on a blank tape. That way, I was certain that the device was still working and wasn't going to destroy the tapes I wanted to preserve. Mechanical devices like VCRs can chew up a tape if they haven't been maintained, and ones that haven't been used in some time are especially prone to this."



I have to second that tip on testing your VCR before you do anything. Our Sony deck just bit the dust, but not before eating a few of my girlfriend's Yoga tapes. Now, if you've got a working VCR, I have an even easier way to transfer those old tapes to DVD: a stand-alone DVD recorder. Just plug in your VCR, hit play, hit record on the DVD recorder, and voila, instant DVD. Some DVD recorders will even create disc menus, with a thumbnail from the video clip, and a text label for each video segment. I've tried ripping video, editing it, and burning it to DVD before, and frankly, it's a pain in the ***. If you're planning on doing this, stick with a stand-alone recorder. You can always go back and edit the video on the disc later.