How to Copy a VHS to a DVD

Video Transcript

"Hey, it's Rokosz, your Digital Lifestyle Expert here and we're going to show you how to connect your VHS player to your computer. Now the first thing you have to ask yourself, is once I've made the connection, what am I going to do with it? Well, most likely you're going to edit or, and or archive it. So you're going to want to make sure you have a program inside the computer that can handle that. Just by making the connection, doesn't make the information magically go from one device to the other. So if you've got Premiere or Sony Vegas on your PC or Final Cut Studio or Final Cut Express or iMovie on your Mac. All those will gratefully accept the information from your VHS player. Another thing you have to find out is, does your computer have the requisite connectors, and what are those? Well, you're either going to want to have a HDMI for the ultra modern ones. You're going to also, either that or an S-Video connector or one of the RCA connectors. Now if you don't have those connectors, like for instance the Mac here does not. You have the ability to get a connector box, like this. This plugs into a special connector on the side of the Mac. And this provides us the Super Video and the RCA input for one or the other, as we're putting it out. The audio goes into the microphone port on the side of the computer. Some computers have a Dock, like this one here for the Sony VAIO. And it has the composite and a few other different connectors. Now there's another way to do it, if you don't have any of those options, which is a breakout box. Now if you do a lot of video converting, the breakout box is a great unit. Because well, it allows all three of them, including Digital FireWire. If you're coming out of a Camcorder to go into your computer. So by hooking up a unit like this, you have the ability to record from VHS, DVD, Audio and your Camcorder. So there's a lot of different ways to do it. But I'm going to show you how to connect it using a Super Video or S-Video cable. the first thing we're going to do is, hook the S-video cable into the back of our VHS player. And then we're going to go ahead and hook it into the connector. In this case, I'm going to be using the little breakout box for the Mac. Now we hook up our audio and we put it into the microphone input on the computer. It's really that easy, you're going from out to in, from out to in, have the requisite program to do it. And you can get all those great VHS home movies right into an editing program. and be ready to save them forever. Hey, just a personal warning, I've seen it happen time and time again. VHS tapes have an extremely short shelf life, of about fourteen to fifteen years, and they will start to flake off and destroy. So either do it yourself or have it professionally done. That's a little tip from me to you, or those memories are lost forever. Rokosz, Your Digital Lifestyle Expert saying, stream you later."