Oh, oh. We’re in that mode again — purging anything that isn’t nailed down or moving out of the way fast enough. My beloved is in her spring cleaning mode and that means eliminating objects we haven’t touched in a year.

But what to do about all of those videos stacking up and gathering dust? Sure, the ones that are pre-recorded can go off to the public library and my son’s schools since video still has meaning for them. But what about the ones we recorded ourselves? Our commitment ceremony, family gatherings, a copy of a video about midget racing that featured a brief tribute to a grandfather. Pretty precious stuff that I don’t want to hand off to the over-sized garbage bag.

Here’s an interesting offering: VHS to DVD 3.0 Deluxe from Honestech.

The package, which includes hardware and software, allows you to take the data contained on those VHS videos and convert them to DVD, MPEG-4, even PDA or mobile device format. Or, you can convert audio from cassettes, LPs and videotapes.

The software is easy enough to install, the “VidBox” slightly more complicated to use. About the size of a tin of Altoids, it has five ports or connections. You plug the USB cable in the box into the VidBox. You plug the other end into your computer. Then you take the composite and audio cables from your VCR or camcorder and connect those to the back of your VidBox. (A handy start guide with color photos shows you how to do this.) If you’re doing audio, you need to get a 3.5mm audio cable that links the two devices — the VidBox and the boombox or whatever you’re playing from. It plugs into the headset jack.

That’s it. Then you crank up the software, choose audio or video and go through the paces: capture, edit, burn. If you’re a novice, you can choose the wizard, which will walk you through the steps of conversion.

This is a pretty slick device that’s reasonably priced. Adios, brown tape!

Posted on June 6th, 2008 by dian