Don had called up wondering what the best way to get video from his VHS tapes to his computer so he could burn them to DVD. I had mentioned a product called a “Digital to Analog Converter”, or a “DAC” for short. I had mentioned Sony as one possible place to check.
The fine audience of WPR has another suggestion. Charles mentioned that he uses a Canopus ADVC-110 with good results, even for converting old audio tapes. He says you can get find them on eBay for about $200. Now that he mentions it, I believe that one of my clients uses this manufacturer as well.
You can find info about the product here. Canopus ADVC 110
Looking through Froogle for “Canopus ADVC110″ looks like they’re going for $250 - $300 when new.
Remember when using Froogle, when you find a cheap price, always Google (search the web) the name of the store and the word “reviews”. Some of the stores out there are not such good deals when you hear about how the customers get treated.
I also mentioned the need for external storage. Charles pointed out that one hour of DV video, in its raw form, is 13 GB. I’ve had reasonably good luck (and good prices) with LaCie external hard drives. Again, Froogle is a great place to shop for the best price.
For older Macs, make sure you get one that has “Firewire” or the less roll-of-the-tongue name “IEEE 1394″. Some of the older machines don’t have the newer version of USB (called 2.0) and using the old version for hard drives is enough to make you pull out your hair. For that matter, Firewire typically gives slightly better benchmarks for drives than USB does, even if you do have a newer Mac.
Lastly, if you just want the raw video on DVD, you might be better off with a service that does this for you. The only downside is that you miss the opportunity to do any editing.
