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morgansh

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 13, 2003
20
0
i want to to convert alot of vhs tapes to dvd. i dont want to get a camcorder so thought i would get a dv converter. anybody know of some good ones that wont cost me an arm and a leg. i found a good one for 150 but of course it was for windows only. any help would be great.
 

WinterMute

Moderator emeritus
Jan 19, 2003
4,776
5
London, England
There have been a number of threads on this topic in the last few weeks, do a search in this section, you'll see the main recommendations are:

Formac TV

and

Dazzle DV bridge.
 

Pseudonym

macrumors regular
Jan 21, 2004
137
0
Old Blighty
Of course, I am sure you are not considering ripping your old vhs movies on to DVD;). Most converters don't allow this on copyrighted material - there is some mystical track that they recognise.

Must admit this bugs me a bit as I feel that I've already bought the film, but there you go.
 

MacBoyX

macrumors 6502
Jan 3, 2003
406
0
East Coast, USA
If you have home videos and such and you want to import them, I use the Dazzle Hollywood Bridge. It is Composite inputs on one side and FW on the other it converts from Analog to Digital. I forget how much it cost but when you start iMovie, it just sees your VCR as a DV source.

It works pretty good.

macboyX
 

jeremy.king

macrumors 603
Jul 23, 2002
5,479
1
Holly Springs, NC
Originally posted by Pseudonym
Of course, I am sure you are not considering ripping your old vhs movies on to DVD;). Most converters don't allow this on copyrighted material - there is some mystical track that they recognise.

Must admit this bugs me a bit as I feel that I've already bought the film, but there you go.

Where have you seen this? Fair use allows you to backup any movie you legally bought as long as it makes no profit.
 

Pseudonym

macrumors regular
Jan 21, 2004
137
0
Old Blighty
Originally posted by kingjr3
Where have you seen this? Fair use allows you to backup any movie you legally bought as long as it makes no profit.

Fair use or not, many VHS movies have copy protection to stop you ripping to DVD. A lot of converters will not convert tapes with this protection. It's mentioned in this artice (amongst others).

If you are copying under Fair Use, all I am recommending is that you buy a converter that allows you to do just that. You'd be annoyed if you got it out of the box and it didn't work.
 

MacPulse Zack

macrumors newbie
Dec 12, 2002
24
0
Jacksonville, FL
You said you don't want a camcorder, but I picked up a used Sharp MiniDV cam on eBay for $200 that has an analog-to-digital converter built in. I've made several SVCDs and DVDs with it through iMovie.

One thing I like is I can keep a digital copy of the VHS tape or home movie on MiniDV tape as part of the process rather than on my HD.

Oh, and my Sharp MiniDV cam doesn't care about copyright movies :)
 
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