There are quite a few good digital video capture devices around. But instead of DV, I went with ADS Technologies' USB Instant DVD, which I got for about $200. It captures direct to MPEG for burning to VCD, SVCD or DVD without the eternity it can sometimes take for additional encoding and conversion. Capture and DVD authoring software's included, as well as some rudimentary MPEG editing capability.
Cool thing is that you can use the default Lo-Med-Hi capture settings or customize them. A little-known trick is to capture the video in VCD-compatible MPEG1 with the audio sampled at DVD-compatible 48kHz. This allows you to get seven hours on a single DVD when you don't need super-high quality video -- that's a full season of "South Park" on a single disc!
And while you can only polish a turd so much, it is possible to improve the quality of old tapes somewhat. Most video capture software allows adjustments for brightness, contrast, noise reduction and such. If you're so inclined, you can also separate the audio track, spiff it up with your favorite audio editing software, rejoin it to the video track, then burn to disc.
Rev
I don't know enough technical stuff (I'm a Mac newbie) to help you hook up your camcorder to the computer.
XLR8's Interview will hook an analog camera into a USB port. Easy to use and
should be available on ePay or swaplist. I think I paid $30 new from XLR8.
It came with a QT 5 Pro license.
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