How to Upload Video to Your Computer

Computers offer a great solution to saving and storing old home movies or transferring video onto a hard drive or disk. Uploading your videos onto a computer and saving them in a digital format is a great way to preserve them for posterity.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

1. Check that the computer has enough hard drive space to accept and properly store the uploaded video. Video requires a substantial amount of file space, and a large hard drive is the best answer to this issue.

2. Purchase a video card for the computer that allows for several video-uploading options. The video card should have connections for RCA or Firewire plug ports for direct connection to other video devices, like camcorders.

3. Open the video software application that will handle the uploading and storage of the media. Windows XP, Media Center and Vista offer a program called Movie Maker built into the operating system itself. This is an excellent application to upload video to the computer. Follow the program's interface to bring the video onto the computer.

4. Connect the media device to the computer's video interface, and turn on the device so that the computer can identify and allow video transfer to the hard drive.

5. Allocate a new file to accept the video. Create and name a new file folder for the uploaded video. Typically, the name describes to type or content of the video.

Tips & Warnings

• Record all of the uploaded video onto a CD or DVD once the video is saved on the computer. This serves as a backup copy of the video should anything happen to the original video file.
• Use Apple's iMovie2 movie-making tool. This is a free operating system application similar to Windows' Movie Maker program.

Resources

• Download Windows Movie Maker 2.1.
• Download iMovie HD 6.0.2.