Click Here If You Are Looking For How To Build Your Own Personal Video Recorder

NOTE FROM RUEL:
DIGITAL HOME MOVIE
RECORDING & EDITING:

Most TV Tuner cards and PC video cameras will usually come packaged with some sort of software for video recording,¹  video capture, single-frame capture, and maybe some sort of video editing program. But you don't really need a TV Tuner card if you want to transfer your home movies to a digital format. You can look at this page for something to help you do the transferring, recording, and editing of your home movies. There are also additional links for you to check out if you want to do some sophisticated video editing. If you want some free video editing software go check out the banner to the left for Videomaker Magazine -- they're giving away a free CD with free trial video editing software to subscribers.

Home Video Movie
Recording And Editing
Also Transferring Home
Movies to Digital Format

For home-video movie-making and video-editing, you would hook up your video camcorder or your VCR to either a video transfer device or to the input on a TV Tuner card on your PC to transfer your home movies. Once digitally recorded, such as in MPEG or AVI format, your home movies will be protected from the wear and tear of repeated viewings." To make a playable Video CD (VCD), you will need a CD-RW drive. So with a CD-RW drive, the right transfer / capture hardware (such a videotape transfer device, or connecting to the input on a TV Tuner card), and the right software, you too can make VCDs of your home movies that you can play on your home DVD player to watch on your TV set. Or you can play the VCD on your PC. But you have to note that simply copying video files to a CD (or to a DVD) does not turn the disc into something that can be automatically played on a DVD player. You will need to know how to do the correct authoring required to put the files in the right format and arrangement on the disc to make a playable VCD or DVD that can actually be played on a DVD player -- otherwise you are making a storage disc that can only be accessed on a PC.

If you never heard of VCDs, well, you may have at least heard about karaoke music videos which for the most part originate from Asia. Those karaoke videos are on VCDs -- before there were VCDs, the karaoke music videos were on the larger laser discs. This is in contrast to the simplier CD-G which is CD music discs with karaoke text. Right now, home DVD players are hot sellers in the US. But the success of DVD players is replicating the previous and continuing success of VCD players over in Asia. (see footnote on the "VCD" format alphabet soup in China and Asia².) VCDs are hot -- with the right equipment and software, you can also make VCDs of your home movies.

Or You Too Can Become
A DVD Movie Maker ....

Okay, you have your home video transferred to your PC. And you can put it on CD. But now you want to transfer it to a DVD. Whoa! What do you need now? If you want to make DVD discs, first you will need a DVD-RW drive also known as a DVD recordable drive (and then there are the DVD+RW and the DVD-RAM drives -- the differences between the different categories of drives and which are the cheaper discs of DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW are a completely different topics that are covered very well elsewhere on the net). And you will also need a software program (such as Easy CD Creator 5.0) that will let you burn your videos to DVD so you can create playable DVDs -- the chances are that whatever DVD-RW drive you get will come with some sort of software that will let burn videos to DVDs that you can play on a DVD player. Many DVD movie-making programs can burn movies to both playable DVDs and Video CDs.