Advice about video captures?

[eric B]

I have a lot of ballbusting clips from films and T.V. programmes on VHS and DVD that I haven't seen on the net yet and I'd like to put them on my laptop so that I can upload them to the internet. The only problem is my laptop is really outdated and runs on Windows ME.

Can anyone recommend any hardware or software that is compatible with ME, or is it just better to wait until I've got newer laptop?

[msjstw]

I have a lot of ballbusting clips from films and T.V. programmes on VHS and DVD that I haven't seen on the net yet and I'd like to put them on my laptop so that I can upload them to the internet. The only problem is my laptop is really outdated and runs on Windows ME.

Can anyone recommend any hardware or software that is compatible with ME, or is it just better to wait until I've got newer laptop?

Before you do that, maybe you could check out the BB Database:

http://www.bbdatabase.com/

And then give us a list of which of these clips you have?

Many of these clips are already known/shared, so it might not be worth the extra-hassle from you ;)

Nevertheless I appreciate your willingness to contribute!!

If there are indeed some clips we don't have yet, I'm sure a lot of people will be very happy to help you out with capping software (I'll check out how to help you there as well...)

Thanks!

[eric B]

I've got Last Resort, Black Belt Jones, Murphy's Law, Scooby Doo 2, Avenging Angel, Soldier Soldier (T.V. series) just to name a few.

[vlad_Drakulav]

The first step is to get any clips on VHS onto DVD (there are shops that do this for you, or you can buy a DVD / VHS combo and record from VHS to DVD yourself, etc etc).

Once you've got the clips on DVD and throw it into your lappy (assuming it has a DVD-ROM. If it doesnt, then you will need to get 1 for it, or get a whole new computer).

From this point, probably the best approach would be to find a DVD-ripping tool (since these tools usually apply compression to the video, decreasing its size to something reasonable for uploading). Rip the DVD to an AVI or MPEG / MPG format.

Once its an MPEG or AVI, you can import it into Movie Maker (which comes with ME afaik), cut out the clip you want, then save that as a WMV, which should be a tiny size around a few megs, perfect for uploading.

Then throw it on youtube, rapidshare, megaupload, etc etc.