Transfer Video to CD

If you have piles of videotapes crowding your home entertainment center, 
it's probably time to consolidate the tapes and upgrade your system. 
You can transfer the videos to CD and watch them in a DVD player.
 
Moving videos from tape to CD requires two steps. 
1.	Digitize the video 
2.	Record that data onto a CD

Digitize the video
 
Digitizing is a way to convert analog video into data you can store on your hard drive. 
To do this, you need a video capture card or, if you have a digital video camera, 
a 1394 or FireWire port. 
The ATI All-In-Wonder is a good video card with capture capabilities. 
ATI also offers the less expensive TV-Wonder video capture card. 
If you don't want to replace your video card, pick up a stand-alone capture card like 
Pinnacle Systems Studio DC10 Plus. The Studio DV is a good choice for digital video cameras. 
Capture your video to hard drive using the best quality possible with a color depth of at 
least 24 bits per pixel. The chief limitation here is the speed of your system and size 
of your drives. 

Record a CD 

Once you have the movies on your drive, the simplest thing to do is to burn a CD with
the captured video. It's a little slicker and friendlier to your viewers to record the CD 
as a video CD or VCD. This is a standard for creating CD-based movie discs that predates DVD. 

1.	Create a VCD 
Some capture software can save the resulting video in VCD-compatible MPEG-1 format. 
If not, save it as an AVI and use a free program called AVI2VCD to convert it. 
The AVI2VCD page has useful information on what kind of files a VCD needs. 

2.	Record a VCD 
Use a VCD authoring program to record your VCD. One common solution is 
Roxio's Easy CD Creator Deluxe. It's only $69 for the package. 
Easy CD Creator will arrange your video files onto a CD and can create simple menus so 
you can navigate your files.
 
3.	VCD playback 
If you want to watch the VCD on your PC, you need software that supports VCD playback.
Although most PC DVD playback software can handle VCD, some may require you to download a 
VCD player to watch your VCD in Windows. 
Most, but not all, DVD players support VCD. If you're buying a new player, 
check the specs carefully if you want this functionality