Converting VHS to Digital Video

Getting a digital file from a tape
Steve Martin once gave a great tip about how to get a million dollars and not pay taxes. "First," he said, "get a million dollars..." Declaring that putting video on the web is easy may sound just as ridiculous if the video is locked up on a VHS tape. Actually, getting a digital video file from a tape isn't all that hard. With the proper cables and A/V inputs a VCR can be connected to a computer and magnetic tape can be converted to digital ones and zeros. The adventurous may want to get geeky and give it a shot--but for the purposes of this newsletter let's assume the dang S-Video cable adapter has disappeared, or more precisely that we don't even know what an S-video cable looks like.

The solution--pony up twenty bucks or so and send the tape to VideoSilo (www.videosilo.com) and they'll send it back as a digital file. They have a bunch of options from DVD to raw DV files and even offer rush services. (NOTE: I have received some complaints about VideoSilo and there is a negative comment below--you may want to look for an alternative service.)

So whether the video was digital to start with, transferred from an old VCR, or processed by VideoSilo, now it's time to get it on the web.

A word about DV files
One remaining technical issue regarding the uploading of video to the web is that most online services do have file size limitations, usually between 50MB and 100MB per file. That means hours of video can't be uploaded, at least not as one big file. It also means that raw digital video files, if they are bigger than that, will need to be converted and compressed to get under the file size upload limit.

In order to test out some of the services we're reviewing in this month's newsletter I converted a clip from one of my home videos (see below). I used the capture and editing software that came with my digital camcorder to transfer the video off the MiniDV tape to my computer. It was actually very simple, I just hooked up the camera to my computer using a standard USB cable and followed the instructions in the software. It took awhile to process but was really easy. Using the editing software, I clipped the section I wanted but ended up with a four minute clip that was almost 500 MB-much too large to upload to the web. Forrest, one of our new employees here in North Carolina, recommended downloading DivX to convert the file (www.divx.com/divx/windows/converter). They have a free trial and the commercial product is only $19.95. I found DivX extremely easy to use. I simply dragged and dropped my 500MB AVI file onto the DivX converter window and a few minutes later I had a 30MB DivX file, ready to be uploaded to the web.   next >