Converting Old Home Movies to DVD
July 29, 2010,
By Christian Cawley
0 comments
Ever thought about that old trunk in the loft full of old Super 8 movies, or suddenly remember the shelf of once-viewed VHS tapes from your old camcorder and wondered what to do with them in this digital age? Wishing there was a way to convert movies to DVD or save your old home movies onto your PC to upload to YouTube? Fortunately, there is!
Digital camera, VHS and even cine film can be converted and saved to DVD with the right equipment, suitable software (usually free) and a bit of patience.
While you can connect a digital camcorder to your computer via USB or Firewire and using software such as Windows Movie Maker, transferring video from a VHS tape or even capturing your cine film is another matter entirely.
Capturing Cine Film
The task of capturing Super 8 or any of the other cine formats can prove quite complicated. The basic requirements are a projector and a capture box, basically a small projector screen in a box with a mirror installed, and a digital/video camera for recording the output.
You'll find these items online at sources like eBay – if you’re looking for a fun project or have plenty of old movies to get through, then that's the best way to go. Alternatively, you could find a local service that does it for you. You should be able to find a provider for such a service either in a local directory, via Google or even on eBay – although this tends to be a more expensive route.
If you opt to handle the conversion from cine to DVD yourself, you'll need to record your cine onto video using a converter box, and then either transfer it directly to your computer if you used a digital camera or else capture the recorded movie if you recorded it on videotape.
Capturing VHS/Video Tape
Whether you’ve recorded some cine film as described above, or you have a load of home movies on VHS that you want to save to your computer for burning later onto DVD, you will need to capture the video output from your camera onto your computer. This is commonly done with a video capture device. Traditionally these are internal devices - and if you’re technically minded, you might pick up a bargain. More commonly, external video capture devices are becoming available, and they're more versatile and portable. Again, check online for some options.
Once it's installed, a video capture device lets you record video, played back at the standard speed. It’s similar to plugging your video camera into your TV to playback what you’ve recorded; only here you plug it into your computer and record the output.
On a Windows PC, use Windows Movie Maker (or its most recent equivalent) to manage the capture of the video; meanwhile on an Apple computer, you should be looking at using Pinnacle Video Capture for Mac, a USB device that comes with its own software.
Copy to DVD or Upload to YouTube
When you're ready to convert movies to DVD, you have a choice - you don't only have to save them to DVD, you can put them online.
Once they're digital format, you can clean up your video with the same basic movie making software used to capture the video, or something more specialized such as Adobe Premiere (particularly useful for cine recordings where the original film might have been damaged or have started to rot).
Almost all video editing software has an option for saving movie clips in a variety of formats, both for burning to CD or DVD and for uploading to the web. Obviously the quality differs here – smaller files are designed for the web, whereas larger files with better quality can be burnt to disc.Converting old home movies into digital format isn't always easy, but you'll find it's well worth the time and effort.
Christian Cawley is a contributor to Six Apart Media.
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