Comments

menopausal wrote on 6/8/2008, 6:22 AM
I am going to try this:

http://cooldrives.stores.yahoo.net/eausdvviavus.html

Oh, and there's a sort of instructional video here:

http://cooldrives.stores.yahoo.net/raidinfo.html

MSmart wrote on 6/8/2008, 8:49 AM
Canopus is highly recommended. I don't have it though.

What kind of video cam do you have? It may support video pass-through. Connect VCR to cam, cam to computer.
Chienworks wrote on 6/8/2008, 8:50 AM
Dazzle is a very bad choice. Most any device that converts to MPEG is a very bad choice.

If you want decent transfers look for a device that encodes to DV. Canopus makes a line of different devices, some stand-alone boxes and some cards that install in the computer. The ideal unit is the ADVC-300 which includes a time base corrector that helps restore stability to old icky VHS tapes. It's a tad expensive at around $400+. The model 110 is quite a bit cheaper but doesn't include the time base corrector.

Quite a few Digital 8 and MiniDV camcorders will handle the conversion too. Some will do it on the fly; any analog signal coming in gets converted and piped out the firewire port in real time. Some require recording to tape first, then playing it back. You can find old used camcorders to do this on ebay sometimes very cheap.

In all these cases Vegas itself has nothing to do with the conversion. The device you use does the conversion to DV. Vegas' VidCap program will capture an AVI file through firewire just the same as if you were capturing a MiniDV tape.
PuppyDogMom wrote on 6/8/2008, 9:43 AM
I have a sony camcorder, very basic but only a couple of months old.

I was looking for something a little less expensive which is why I was looking at Dazzle. But Dazzle doesn't get very good reviews.

Once the conversion is done, can you edit with Vegas?
Chienworks wrote on 6/8/2008, 12:55 PM
Vegas won't know or even care where the video came from. It will be DV .avi files which are what Vegas prefers to work with.