I just bought a 500 GB External Hard Drive with the hope to put all of our home movies on. A few years ago, I had a grand plan to convert to my home movies to DVD but that proved to be a larger project than I wanted to get involved in. Anyway, I want to essentially capture our home movies on the hard drive preserving the best quality in its raw form (for potential editing and converting to dvd in the future). I used Microsoft Movie Maker for my test and captured at High Quality Video Large 640x480 30 fps. When I played it back in full screen, the quality didn't appear to be as good as the VHS tape. My questions are: What format should I save these in (not sure wmv is the best format here)? What is the simplest capture program to use? Again, just looking to put these VHS tapes on a hard drive to prevent any further video deterioration from being on a VHS tape. A few years from now when I have some spare time, the thought is to perhaps edit down a "best of" home movie type thing (i.e. for college graduation, wedding, etc..) Thanks for the help.
Use a DVD recorder to capture. Use R/W disks and you can use the same disk over and over again. Or if you'd like additional backup use Verbatim or some other good DVD blank. I just got 50 Verbatim for $13 so that's not that expensive an option.
Thanks. That seems to be the best option. Now I need to buy a stand alone DVD recorder. Any suggestions? Should I go for a combo VHS DVDR or a DVD R stand alone?
