gofar99 Messages: 1939 Registered: May 2010 Location: Southern Arizona
Illuminati (5th Degree)
Hi Some capture cards are available as external USB connected devices. You feed the video and audio into the device and software supplied with the device will make a digital copy. Some programs will allow you to make DVDs of the files. Be aware though that the copy process takes place in real time and the copy process can be lengthy as well. There are some standalone devices that have a VCR and DVD recorder in one case. They were quite common a few years ago and would allow you to put in a non-copy protected video tape and make a DVD of it all in one process. I seem to recall they were by Magnavox and Panasonic and were in the $200 range. Personally I would rather put the video on a hard drive first and then edit it if needed and then send it to a disk. The external video cards were about $60-100 and made by several companies. I would probably go that route. Be aware though that you need to verify that your PC has a good enough processor, ram and large enough drive. Video eats up drive space at an enormous rate.