Convert home movie VHS to DVDs?

As stated, what is the best way to convert home movie VHS tapes to DVDs? My father has taken home movies of every major holiday/family get together for the past 25+ years, and we have 40-50 VHS tapes. I would like to convert them to DVD as a Christmas gift for my parents (and possibly for other family members as well) but don't know what the best (and cheapest ) way to go about it would be.

I've seen places that offer to do it for a fee, but even at the cheapest (~15 per tape) that's going to be crazy expensive for how many tapes we have.

Thanks in advance for any input!

Probably one of these.

http://www.amazon.com/Magnavox-Reco...HQLC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1289679584&sr=8-1

You won't have many fancy options for custom menus or anything (you can do chapters though), but it's probably the easiest, quickest way to do this job. The reason most places charge $15 a tape is because the work is tedious as hell. Remember what it's like watching a VHS tape, and having to fastforward at 2x speed. Now imagine doing that for 40 tapes...with up to 6 hours of footage on each one. That's a ridiculous job for anybody.

If the time committment doesn't bother you, you could get a capture card and connect a VCR to your computer...store the videos on your hard drive, and make your own DVDs. But that's even more work. At least with the DVD/VCR combo, you can set up your in/out points for each segment (if you're wanting each tape to be its own DVD, this would be even easier) then tell it to do the work itself. Either way, it's time consuming, but it'll make a hell of a gift, haha.

Menus et al are not a big deal, I just want them on discs instead of tapes. I'll have to look into different DVD/VCR combos. Every review I read has at least one or two people bitching the DVDs don't work in other players. Maybe a capture card would be better after all. And luckily, most of the tapes are the goofy little tapes that only hold an hour or two, so hopefully it won't be so bad.

Thanks for the suggestions!

EDIT: So while looking around the net, I came upon USB video transfer kits, such as
http://www.amazon.com/Diamond-VC500-Touch-Capture-Device/dp/B000VM60I8

Anyone have any experience with this or other similar items? I think this would be the best route, but again reviews range from "ZOMG I love it" to "makes blurry pos vids"...

Or maybe this: http://www.monoprice.com/products/p..._id=1081003&p_id=5616&seq=1&format=4#feedback and then find a good software to use with it?

If you don't want to fiddle around with software, you can just get a DVD recorder and connect the VCR to the DVD recorder and it'll record straight from the tape to a blank DVD - I'm doing it right now, and it's an easy, no-fuss solution and a DVD recorder shouldn't set you back too much - I got one at Best Buy for about $75 last year.

[quote name='Zmonkay']EDIT: So while looking around the net, I came upon USB video transfer kits, such as
http://www.amazon.com/Diamond-VC500-Touch-Capture-Device/dp/B000VM60I8

Anyone have any experience with this or other similar items? I think this would be the best route, but again reviews range from "ZOMG I love it" to "makes blurry pos vids"...

Or maybe this: http://www.monoprice.com/products/p..._id=1081003&p_id=5616&seq=1&format=4#feedback and then find a good software to use with it?[/QUOTE]

I haven't had good experiences with those little converters. Ultimately, you're going to get what you pay for. Sure, everybody wants to be cheap, but you can't be unrealistic either. From what I've seen personally from those converters, the picture is awful, it will drop frames pretty bad, and the sound is bad.

Also, a point of doing anything on your computer is you will need a really fast CPU with a lot of RAM and a pretty huge hard drive. Customer experiences are going to vary with everything, so even reviews will be difficult to gauge. You could try one of the converters to see for yourself. But if you're wanting this to be a Christmas gift, it could just end up being a waste of time.

Oh, and to go along with Jay's suggestion, I checked out the Amazon Warehouse and found this (there's others on there as well, but this was the cheapest).

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-list...=generic&qid=1289764011&sr=1-8&condition=used

If the refurb one I posted earlier turned you off (though that was a combo unit), this one comes straight from Amazon but has to be listed as "used" because it's basically just a customer return. People have had almost exclusively great experiences buying from the Amazon Warehouse. I haven't looked into how good the recorder is, but the comments are good and Toshiba is a good brand. It's got HDMI on it too so it can be used as an upconverting DVD player as well.

DVD recorders get the job done for me personally. Unless you're wanting it in like HD(I personally don't).

ALL YOU NEED TO DO IS USE A VIDEO CAPTURE SOFTWARE AND DEVICE ,FOR EXAMPLE A USB CAPTURE DEVICE ( http://cgi.ebay.com/EASYCAP-USB-2-0...911?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item33627a85cf ) ...(DIRT CHEAP FOR LIKE 5 BUCKS ON EBAY) GET THE USB CAPTURE DEVICE / SOFTWARE CONNECT ANY VHS MACHINE THAT HAS COMPOSITE OUTPUTS TO IT (RED,YELLOW,WHITE OUTPUTS) CLICK PLAY AND JUST TRANSFER / RECORD OVER DIGITALLY TO YOUR PC AND TURN THEM INTO FILES TO STORE ON YOUR HARD DRIVE OR TRANSFER BURN THEM ON TO DVD, WHATEVER IS YOUR PLEASURE.

P.S. ONLY THING THAT SUCKS IS THAT ITS PRETTY TIME CONSUMING BECAUSE IT RECORDS IN REAL TIME,FOR EXAMPLE IF THE VIDEO IS 2 HOURS IT'LL TAKE TO HOURS TO DIGITIZE IT, BUT IT WORTH IT TO SAVE MEMORIES...NO?

[quote name='cheko']ALL YOU NEED TO DO IS USE A VIDEO CAPTURE SOFTWARE AND DEVICE ,FOR EXAMPLE A USB CAPTURE DEVICE ( http://cgi.ebay.com/EASYCAP-USB-2-0...911?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item33627a85cf ) ...(DIRT CHEAP FOR LIKE 5 BUCKS ON EBAY) GET THE USB CAPTURE DEVICE / SOFTWARE CONNECT ANY VHS MACHINE THAT HAS COMPOSITE OUTPUTS TO IT (RED,YELLOW,WHITE OUTPUTS) CLICK PLAY AND JUST TRANSFER / RECORD OVER DIGITALLY TO YOUR PC AND TURN THEM INTO FILES TO STORE ON YOUR HARD DRIVE OR TRANSFER BURN THEM ON TO DVD, WHATEVER IS YOUR PLEASURE.

P.S. ONLY THING THAT SUCKS IS THAT ITS PRETTY TIME CONSUMING BECAUSE IT RECORDS IN REAL TIME,FOR EXAMPLE IF THE VIDEO IS 2 HOURS IT'LL TAKE TO HOURS TO DIGITIZE IT, BUT IT WORTH IT TO SAVE MEMORIES...NO?[/QUOTE]

I have one of these. It's a piece of shit.

YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR.

Garbage in, garbage out.

You want something like a Pinnacle Dazzle video capture device. Then you can hook your VHS player up to it, record the video to a file, then convert the file into a DVD. They might even bundle in basic DVD authoring software so you could at least put some chapters on the disc.

[quote name='Zmonkay']Menus et al are not a big deal, I just want them on discs instead of tapes. I'll have to look into different DVD/VCR combos. Every review I read has at least one or two people bitching the DVDs don't work in other players. Maybe a capture card would be better after all. And luckily, most of the tapes are the goofy little tapes that only hold an hour or two, so hopefully it won't be so bad.

[/QUOTE]

Just get a DVD recorder, you don't need a combo. Only licensed VHS (and some at that) will not not copy on a DVD recorder because of protection. With any DVD-r or DVD+r you are going to have some players that will not play on all players. Usually they are about 90%+ compatable at this point. If you want 100% compatable you have to send it the source data and get it pressed into a DVD-ROM. I don't think it's a big issue and buying a new $30 player for the one (maybe) family member that can't play the disc is going to be cheaper than getting discs pressed.

HD? Your not going to get VHS to HD unless you want to create a bunch of noise in the source data.

It really sounds like the best option for you is to use a DVD recorder - assuming you already have a VCR. I have my DVD recorder hooked up to the TV with component cables, so the VQ is decent. However, if you want the audio to be preserved well, it's best to have a stereo connection on the VCR, not a mono one.

All I have to do is put my VCR on top of the DVD recorder, hook up the AV cable from the DVD recorder to the VCR instead of my cable box, select the proper input, make sure the tape is set at the beginning, then just play on the VCR and hit record on the DVD recorder. Setup is only a few minutes as long as you have the materials (tape, DVD-R, remotes) handy. I tried using a VHS-to-DVD program and box that I got for maybe $20 at a store, and found the VCR-to-DVD recorder setup to be much simpler - you lose out on menus to a degree (you can at least make a basic one on any recorder), but it's so much easier to use that I've never minded it. As far as compatibility goes, the stuff I record on my Toshiba DVD recorder works on everything I've tried them on - 360, PS2, PS3, and my old KLH DVD player.

Here's the model I have - perhaps it'll be on sale during Black Friday week this year like it was last year when I picked it up for $80-
http://reviews.bestbuy.com/3545/962...r-r-dl-rw-recorder-reviews/reviews.htm?page=2

Thanks for all of the suggestions everyone! From what most of you seem to have experienced, I will keep an eye out for a DVD recorder and just run my VCR through it. Sorry for the late reply, I've been crazy busy this past week. Thanks again all!