I have some old movies on the VCR tapes format --- I want to put them on DVD's and or store them on my hard drive (350 gig). What hardware woud you recomend to convert the tapes and what format to keep them on the hard disk and the format for CD also the type of disk to burn. I am new to video as you can see! the longest journey starts with a single step

You will need a tv tuner card with multiple input (composite video input is the one you need) Install and set up your card, plug vcr composite (and audio) outs to tv tuner card in. (If you have svideo in/outs you can use this instead of composite in/out). You should record in MPEG2 format. You will be allowed to set bitrate (level of quality) and I have found that a rate of about 5000kps is a good compromise between size and quality. With this setting you will gat almost 2 hours on a DVD I would suggest Hauppage tv card. They are simple to operate and record pretty good quality. That's the hardware, but editing and such, you will also need the software and I would suggest Pinnacle Studio. Lots of others out there but Pinnacle I think is the easiest to use and is much more flexible. It will even let you burn dolby digital and prologic (one of the few reasonabley priced editors with these options) Disks to be used: I have experimented with a lot of them and I keep going back to the MAXELL -r. But you should run a test on your home DVD player. Some players are good at running home burned disks and others will have trouble. In a nutshell, that's it.

One additional note: There are other tuner cards out there, but STAY AWAY FROM ATI TUNER CARDS. These cards are SOFTWARE driven. In other words they contain no processing chip. Instead they cheat and use software in combination with YOUR cpu to process the captured data. The result is a large amount of computer resources used and bad MPEG2 recording quality.

I pretty much agree with most of Blackbill's comments. However, I record at about 2000 Kps. It saves a lot of disk space and in my opinion the quality is good enough. You probably should experiment a bit to see what you are happy with. Of course if you are planning on putting them on DVDs, use a higher Kps. The recording software you get with a card sometimes leaves a lot to be desired. You might consider trying some of the 'paid for' software.

Other ideas too at < ahref="http://computing.net/hardware/wwwboard/forum/37283.html" target="blank">http://computing.net/hardware/wwwboard/forum/37283.html Bryan

Oops. http://computing.net/hardware/wwwboard/forum/37283.html Bryan

Many Thanks for the information, however I have a video card XFX 550 with Svideo socket, my VCR player is Hmmm an old GE it has 2 leads sound/video. . .I noticed in Tiger an ad for a converter ADS –Pyro that has all connections has any one used it? If so verdict! The burner is Samsung and comes with Nero. . . .Also is there a software block on the copying of the tapes (tongue in cheek) Many Thanks to all who have answered my questions the longest journey starts with a single step