[geeks] I haven't gotten into this yet but I need some advice

[Ethan]

> My mother wants to take all her tapes of my childhood and my brother's 
> and put them on a preserved format.  She was originally thinking of 
> DVD-R, but she has too old of a Mac to make this cost effective at the 
> moment (9600/233)
> She'd like to know the easiest and cheapest way of preserving these 
> dying videos on either the Mac or the PC.
> She was looking at the CD Video Recorder on www.terapintech.com, but I 
> was wondering what disadvantages or advantages this held since I am not 
> a video person.
> Bill?... anyone else doing this?

The Terapin unit is a Video CD recorder. Probably not good enough.

The Mac is probably the best bet at the moment. It depends on how 
familiar with computers she is. The DVD-R drives are becoming increasingly
inexpensive. I think I last saw one @ CompUSA for $300-$350. It should
come with some sort of authoring program (maybe Sonic DVDit LE?). But the
other issue is getting the video onto the computer. Are the home videos
hi8 or 8mm? If so you should be able to use a Sony camcorder that is
Digital8 to play them back via Firewire and capture with a firewire card. 

If not, your going to want a capture card that can do analog @ 720x480, or 
a converter to convert analog to firewire (or some firewire capable
camcorders can convert). I think a single modern IDE disk should keep up.
I use two Maxtor 40gb 5400 rpm disks on a fasttrak 66 for my setup, and
they normally keep up.

Then there is the issue of what software to "edit" videos. Even though she
might not be editing, normally the capture is done in one of the editing
utilities. Any firewire card with Premiere 6.0 packed in is going to be
expensive, but some may have the ULead utilities with it. I've never used
the Ulead stuff.

I own a Matrox RT2000 setup. It is okay, but crashes alot. You could get
one from eBay for around $550 (the cards and stuff) and it comes with
Sonic DVDit LE for authoring DVDs, it can do analog capture in high enough
quality to move it to DVD. It does Firewire capture as well. It was
replaced by the RT2500... But it only works with Premiere, and it might be
too aggrivating for someone new to cutting up videos for DVD.

There is also the Canopus DVStorm, and the Pinnacle DV1000 or something on
the PC side.

I'd guess that DVD-R drives will be a dime a dozen within 1 year.
(The IDE ones). And it is my understanding that DVD-R media will play back
in almost all set top DVD units, even those that aren't CD-R compatible.

> Regards,
> Andrew