I want my customers to be fully informed before giving me their business. While one of our specialties at Video Labs is indeed to transfer videotapes to digital formats, there are instances when it might make sense to consider doing it yourself.

Within many households today, there are ways to fairly easily transfer your home videos to a web movie, CD or DVD – and edit the footage in the process.

Now, I’m not saying that there’s not some time and labor involved, but for transferring one or two videotapes, it may be a cost-effective alternative for you. Any PC computer with at least XP should have Windows Movie Maker. And any Mac computer today comes with iMovie. Both programs are very user-friendly and fairly powerful editing programs. Most camcorders and computers today have FireWire ports. So, with a FireWire cord between the two, and using either Windows Movie Maker or iMovie, transferring video from camcorder to computer is very easy.

But what if your camcorder or playback deck doesn’t have FireWire? No problem. There are inexpensive products on the market that can convert composite video & audio signals into digital video that can be transferred by FireWire. One such product is ADS Pyro A/V Link  http://tinyurl.com/yphsfj

The diagram below shows an overview of the possible setups.

So, if you have a few personal videos you want to edit and transfer to the digital realm — and are on a limited budget, I suggest you consider these alternatives. If after doing so you still would like me to handle your project, I will of course be happy to discuss that with you.

Feel free to contact me with any further questions at 301-217-0000 x104 or dryan@videolabs.net