hi hope i am in the right forum here!

i want to transfer some holiday camcorder tapes and also a vhs wedding tape i would like to transfer them to my laptop then put them onto a dvd so they can be watched in the dvd player

i have seen these usb capture adapter s on the well known auction site ?

but was wondering if they would do the job ok.

as my budget cant stretch to to costly

or is there something else i can buy for my laptop that does the same thing (capture the audio and video)

my laptop is a Toshiba Satellite A100-522 if that helps

thanks for any advice in advance

thank you from sunny day in the uk : Sporty

Hi Sporty,

There can be nothing more satisfying than to be able to make your own video footage. For this you surely need a capture card which can capture the video as well as the audio. The card should support a suitable user friendly encoding + Video editing software. A thing to note here is that home videos using camcorders are somewhat grainy in nature and the final output may have a resolution problem. They may not have the same sharpness as in professionaly produced movies.

Apart from these, you will also need a DVD burner [writer] to burn the movie to a DVD disk. Lastly but most importantly as I've learnt from this forum, you will also need a exclusive standalone barebone high end computer to help you do the job. There should be no other memory hogging software running in the background. You should have a Hard disk with a capacity not less than 160 Gb. You should have a processor not less than 2.4GHz and Ram preferably 1GHz. [ min 512mb]. Preferably you should also have a separate video card with ist own onboard memory. any thing less than these may deteriorate the final outcome.

You have not mentioned the specs of your laptop or the USB capture card, so it will be difficult to speculate if they will perform for you. If it is THIS what you have, I guess new system with the latest specs would be a better option.

I hope I've been able to understand your problem and the above will be of help to you... please do write in for more information you need. You may also go through this THREAD for more information.

Sun.

hi thanks for that however i dont fancy buying a new laptop just yet i only bought this one in august of last year do you think my laptop which i have which is the same as A100-522 TOSHIBA
MODEL NUMBER ; PSAA2E 01COOJEN do you think it can still do the job ok
thank you

Hi Sporty,

Far as your laptop having enough resources, you are at the low-end of the ladder. The only thing I can say is try it and see. If you start getting dropped frames and glitches you will have your answer.

Need some information: what is your camcorder, digital or analog? Remember analog is old technology now, in fact finding an analog camcorder to purchase would be a problem anymore. If you have a laptop computer, what outputs do you have? I know you have VGA-out, but anything else? Are you running USB2?

Post your processor speed, and how much memory you have. Most of those units you have come stock with 512DDR, is that what you have?

[EDIT]: you might also post what INputs you have on your laptop also, although laps generally are rather limited.