TRANSFER YOUR OLD VIDEO TAPES TO DVDS
If you're like most families, you've been taking lots of home movie videos. Over the years, you've recorded precious memories containing baby's first steps, birthday parities, weddings, and occasions that you want preserved forever. Unfortunately, much of what you have recorded is probably on video tape which will not stand the test of time. Fortunately, we live in the age of optical media where DVD disks can preserve their contents for well over a hundred years.
I'm probably dating myself when I tell you that my parents recorded my family moments onto 16 millimeter black and white film. A few years ago, I had much of it converted to VCR tape thinking that I had saved the family history. But anyone who rents a frequently used VCR movie can tell you what happens to the images that are played over and over again. Images fade, sound distorts and quality vanishes. Transferring images from film is still costly, but Hewlett-Packard has come up with a way to transfer your aging VCR tapes directly to DVDs.
 The HP DVD Movie Writer dc3000 is an external peripheral that connects to your Windows-based computer via a USB port. Once connected, the included software's video transfer wizard will let you transfer the contents of a VCR tape to a DVD disk and can mercifully do so while unattended. After all, you may not want to sit around and watch all those memories while they are being transferred. Kudos to HP for realizing that little fact and making the process an automatic one.
To begin the process, you insert the tape to be coped into any VCR connected to the dc3000. You can directly connect your camcorder as well. Then choose the DVD+R/+RW media onto which you want to record everything and begin the transfer process. The software lets you copy entire tapes or use the computer to edit the home videos before the copying process occurs. The dc3000's built-in capture card lets you transfer all your videos to DVD by simply pressing the video "dub" button.
The dc3000's software lets you add special effects and titling to the videos. You can even print out DVD and CD labels along with jewel-case cover art. The software is a complete software suite of applications that lets you edit, create music, copy disks and even design slideshows with special menus that will work with most any standard home DVD player. All of the editing and creation process is done on the computer. When you have viewed and prepared everything, transfer to a DVD is quick and easy.
In addition, the dc3000 will let you transfer still images and mp3 files to recordable CD and DVD disks. In fact, you can transfer and preserve just about anything multimedia to most any kind of recordable media. One exception is commercial videos. The dc3000 will not allow the duplication of DVD commercial movies. The dc3000 has been designed for those of us who wish to preserve the images we have taken in the past as well as those images we plan to record in the future, and not for those who wish to rip off the movie industry. Storing our audio and video memories on optical media for now seems the best way to insure that they will be viewed by future generations to come. $399.
www.hp.com |
