8mm video is inconvenient to use or to share with my parents (to see their grandson). How what software and equipment do I need to record the video to CDs? Thanks.

-- Charles Will (mindforce@mail.com), April 20, 2001

Answers

You need to get hold of a video capture card. The software you need should be supplied with the card.

-- Carl (Swoosh785@btinternet.com), April 21, 2001.

I use the Intel WebCam Pro (not sure if that is the right name). It has an input port for video and I hook my 8mm video cam to it. I use virtualdub to capture the video and convert it to Indeo 4 compressed avi. I use a video editing program to splice and edit (ABC videoroll). I use avi2vcd to create the mpeg files needed for a vcd and I use NTI CD-Maker 2000 Pro to burn the VCD format on a CD. My friends can play the VCD on their DVD or they can play it using a program called VCDPlay on their PC. It's a lot of work but you can make some pretty fancy VCDs doing this ... but there must be an easier way. It took me a long time to get things just right and figure out which codecs to use. Plus ABC VideoRoll is flakey so you have to save your work a lot ... after almost every edit you make. But you can mix music and different video stream and there are cool transition you can use.

Good luck - Greg

-- Guess (greg_kendall@yahoo.com), April 26, 2001.