Does this scenario sound familiar? You’ve got an ancient camcorder that records to something old like 8mm or mini-VHS tapes; and somewhere nearby, you’ve got a stack of stuff on VHS or god forbid maybe even Betamax. Sure, your new DV camcorder has the handy FireWire port to zap movies onto your PC, but what do you do about the legacy video you’re digging up?
The answer is simple: You need a video capture device that’s compatible with them. Most VHS players and old camcorders do have video- and audio-out ports, including composite and S-video for the pictures and RCA jacks for the sound. The downside is that most modern computers lack inputs for such “old” standards. You’ll need either a PCI or USB video capture device, with the right ports for your equipment.
Once you’ve got such a device installed, you’ll also need movie capture software. The video capture device should come with it, but in a pinch, Windows users can rock with Windows Movie Maker. It’s not exactly Hollywood film gauge software, but for importing and editing home movies, it’ll do nicely.
Let’s take a break from Team Fortress 2 and examine how to coerce some legacy equipment to transfer video into your computer.
Source: Extreme Tech
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