I'm thinking of transferring all of my aged video collection onto my PC but I have no idea where to begin. I guess I'll try asking a few Q's...

What hardware, besides a PC and a VCR, will I need?
Is there software out there that can allow me to 'remaster' the footage?
What sort of bitrate is best for DIVX conversion and DVD rips?
When transferring is Macrovision a problem or is it now easy to bypass?

Thanks for any help.

hi
you need a video card with a video input

if you do and your card is nvidia (I dunno about ATI), you need to install a capture driver wich you can find here : select multimedia software / WDM driver / the one that applies to your card

then, if I remember well, there's an application called "Power VCR" you can use to do the transfer

That's how I'd do it as well, I'd run them through Adobe Premier aswel to clean them up.

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I'm still working on getting all the software and parts for my PC. Once I've sorted all that stuff out I won't need to worry about anything except how far I wanna go with the menu systems and how much I spend on DVD+R's. lol

How well does Adobe Premier work? Is it easy to use too?

If you really want to do it nicely.. get yourself Pinnacle studio 10/11

Buy a dazzle analog/digital video converter.. around 99 euro...

pull your video's though the dazzle into studio.

make something of it, with cutting out unwanted scenes, using transitions, light it up if its dark.. even picture in picture, for great effects... add music, voice over.. etc etc.. and when ready, have your project burned, or make Avi/Mpeg file to disk..

Thats how i am doing it...

I have only like 3000 tapes to go, and then its done...

you now have your own nice film that you can show, without being embarrised for shaking somuch when you taped that knock out girl you secretly had a crash on, from next door..

My mates just got himself a new dawoo dvd video combie that copys direct from tape to dvd takes a lot of the time out of it(beleve me its the best way for him as hes a compleat idiot when it come to using his pc) so heading round to his house with a big bag of tapes which I will then transfer on to my pc and muck about with in sony vegas.

Much to hard.. vegas.. try pinnacle studio 11..