old cam corder tapes to disk how ?

pdrskint

I want to make a xmas cd of past Christmases which I have on camcorder tapes as I have family visiting from abroad I thought it would be nice, plus my granddaughter will be coming is now 7 as her parents gave us a picture of her scan on xmas day so that will be nice to see her reaction, so any simple ways would be appreciated, or is there a lead I can get from camcorder to laptop ,

googler

CDs are audio only. Do you mean you want to create a DVD?

If so, make sure your laptop has a DVD writer drive, not a ROM, or read-only.

Do you have any AV gear apart from the camcorder and laptop?

macman

Hmm. When I was seven, I wanted a lot of things for Christmas. But I don't recall one of them being a picture of myself as a foetus...

kwikbreaks

You probably need some sort of video capture device and use the camcoder AV output to connect to it although some later camcoders had firewire output which could transfer directly not many PCs use that these days.

The resulting video would really need compressing and probably converting to avi. That file could be burned to CD and watched on a PC

It's all possible and at fairly low cost using eBay to source the bits but the quality will also be low and like macman I question just how entertaining it would be.

If you really want to show this the easiest option is to dig out the AV lead that came with the camcorder, plug it into the TV AV input and watch it directly.

penrhyn

When I was 7 I wanted a Bayko brick set.

penrhyn

DVD recorders are probably the best bet they have AV inputs so not too much quality is lost

kwikbreaks

Not many people bought DVD recorders though. A USB capture device costs less than £10 on eBay. The camcorder AV lead is going to be needed whatever method is used and they are often proprietary and get lost over the decades.

The captured data will be pretty much uncompressed so a freeware converter will be needed or some DVD authoring software will probably make that unnecessary.

I went through this process with some old VHS tapes ages ago and it's a royal pita. The initial quality is usually poor by today's standards and converting it most certainly won't lead to an improvement.

===

I recall seeing some high street shop or other offering the conversion fairly recently as a service but I suspect it may have only been for full size VHS tapes and I can't remember the retailer - worth keeping an eye out though.

johnmc

Try the local tip shop (sorry; recycling centre). Ours has DVD re-recorders for about £15. Plug the camera in, press play and record to hardrive then burn to a DVD.

Ebay have conversion kits for a reasonable price.

Enjoy reliving the memories.

baxie

Depending on the camera, you can get a simple USB video Grabber. I got the Silvercrest one from Lidl and have had no problems with it. There are loads of them on Amazon.

You just need to connect the cameras audio and video outputs to the USB interface that plugs into your computer/laptop.

The Silvercrest one comes with software, Cyberlink I think, and then it is just a case of pressing play on the video camera and record on the software and the transfer will begin. This software can also burn a dvd of the transfered video.

Hope that helps, any more questions just ask.:)