Video Capture n00b question.

[0iD]

OK, chaps, what is the best way of getting the family video archives off our Sharp Viewcam VL-A10 onto my PC & then DVD?

Easy or no?

[Hottentot]

Buy a video capture card. They take s-video and composite input. Then encode it as you desire. Then burn it onto a DVD with a PC DVD writer.
I use a Hauppage USB2 capture box although the PVR 250 is recommended as an internal solution.
I found the hardware easy to set-up but the different encoding standards are a real pain.
As are the different TV standards PAL , NTSC etc.
DivX is the most effective compression but Mpeg 2 seems to be the most common on PVRs.
Its a big topic

[0iD]

Cheers m8, time to go shopping methinks!

[0iD]

Well I just purchased a PVR 250 & 200gb HDD
Should be fun

[Stoo]

Stick with mpeg2 encoding, then you can simply burn them off to dvd

DivX is tricky to get good results from (you can get near dvd quality on the size of a cd, but you *really* have to know what you're doing), so it's best to stick with the default mpeg2 (iirc the pvr 250 has full hardware mpeg2 capture and compression) setting.

S-video would probably be the best method of connecting it up as it offers better picture quality over composite (the single yellow phono connector).

Good luck

[0iD]

Cheers Stoo