Capturing Video in a Digital Format

Just as the arrival of videocassettes led consumers to dump their film projectors, so will the advent of digital video discs eventually drive the VCR onto the tech scrap heap.

To speed your own conversion to digital, you can use your computer to turn personal VHS tapes into discs. The process is a lot like turning an LP or tape into a CD: First you “capture” the video digitally on your computer, then you burn the recording onto disc.

For starters, though, you’ll need a computer with a video capture card, a multi-gigabyte hard drive and a DVD or CD recorder.

Numerous manufacturers make capture cards, including ATI, Hauppauge and Pinnacle. Prices start around $150. More expensive cards offer “hardware encoding,” which uses specialized chips to speed the digitizing. Look for something that can record in MPEG-2, which is the type of compression used for DVDs, and MPEG-1, which is used for video CDs. If you don’t mind opening your computer, you can plug one of these cards into an internal slot yourself. Otherwise, find a 14-year-old to do it for you.

(If either of those approaches scares you, look for an external capture device that can plug into a Universal Serial Bus port, such as Creative’s VideoBlaster MovieMaker.)

Position a VCR near your computer, and connect the video and audio outputs to the appropriate plugs on the capture card. At that point, digitizing the tape is a snap--the only thing you need to worry about is having enough space on your computer’s hard drive.

Here are a few guidelines: Each hour of video will take up about 9 GB without compression. MPEG-2 will squeeze that down to a little more than 1.4 GB, and MPEG-1 cuts it to about 600 MB.

Capture cards typically come with some kind of video-editing software, which you can use to take out unwanted footage, add simple effects to jazz up transitions between scenes and customize the soundtrack.

DVD recorders have lots of room, providing about 4.7 GB per double-sided disc--enough for more than three hours of MPEG-2 video. In addition, discs burned in the DVD-R format can be played on any living-room DVD player or computer DVD drive.

One drawback, though, is the expense. Compaq and Apple make computers equipped with DVD-R drives, but they’re $400 to $800 more expensive than comparable models with CD recorders. And DVD-R discs typically cost $20 to $30 each.

A far less expensive alternative is to use a CD recorder to create video CDs, also known as VCDs. They’ll hold about an hour of MPEG-1 video. VCDs can’t be played on a living-room CD player, but they will work on a computer’s CD-ROM drive and many DVD players. About 80% to 90% of the DVD players on the market today can play VCDs, said Blair Birmingham, a product manager at ATI.

CD recorders can be had for less than $100, and blank discs cost about 50 cents.

Your video-editing software might be able to burn digital video files onto CDs, but if it doesn’t, you’ll need something called authoring software. Options include products from Roxio, Nero and NewTech Infosystems.

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Times staff writer Jon Healey covers the convergence of entertainment and technology.