VHS to PC

[dave smith]

A friend of mine has to do a college assignment and for this he needs to copy some video tape into his pc to merge together with some mpegs already on the pc.

The questions are:
1. How does he transfer the video. (I thought he could just use AV cables?)
2. What freeware, if any, is around for him to capture the video in and convert to a suitable file format for editing?

I told him I'd ask a knowledgeable lot so I thought I'd start here as I have been helped out many times.

TIA
Dave.

 

[Eric]

A friend of mine has to do a college assignment and for this he needs

to copy some video tape into his pc to merge together with some mpegs
already on the pc.

The questions are:
1. How does he transfer the video. (I thought he could just use AV cables?)
2. What freeware, if any, is around for him to capture the video in

and convert to a suitable file format for editing?

I told him I'd ask a knowledgeable lot so I thought I'd start here as

I have been helped out many times.

TIA
Dave.

There is a LOT more to it depending on your hardware. Most computers
still don't come with video-in ports that you need to get video from a
VCR. Then you need to know what format your MPG files in and decide
where they are going (pc playback? DVD?).

First step, get as much info on his computer as you can (model, memory,
drives, extra cards, etc) and look and see if there are video and audio
in jacks already built in.

Second step, go to <http://www.videohelp.com/> and ask there. They
have lots of tools (some free, some not) and are THE place to go.