So you’re ready to start digitizing your old home movies on VHS or other analog formats, giving them a new lease on life as digital video (DV). You’ve assembled all the parts: a capable computer with lots of memory (RAM and hard drive space), an analog-to-digital conversion device (either a dedicated converter box or a DV camcorder with “flow-through” capabilities), and some way to play the old media.

In fact, if you’re dusting off the old VCR or camcorder to play the old tapes, you might consider cleaning the player heads (either manually with a Q-Tip and rubbing alcohol, or with a commercial cleaning cassette) to get the best quality output possible. If your VCR is “on the fritz” or just plain old, you might consider buying a new one (they’re, what, $19 these days?). It’ll be worth it.

Before you start the tapes a-rollin’, you need to carefully consider your goals for the final product, as they will influence how you proceed with the digitizing process. Do you want to capture the video into the computer with the intent of editing it? Or, do you want to store the unedited digital video on some kind of digital media, like hard drives or DVDs? Or, do you just want to bulk transfer the video to a DVD that can be viewed on any TV? Most computer software supports any of these options – it’s just best to know what you want at the end in the beginning.

Let’s look at two scenarios. The first is digitizing VHS tapes using an analog-to-digital conversion device – in this scenario a Pinnacle Systems Dazzle Digital Video Creator Platinum ($93.99 at the consumer electronics superstore that recently opened in Topsham). We’ll call it the “Dazzle” for short. Just for grins we’ll say we’re importing the video into a Windows Media Center Edition PC, using a USB 2.0 cable.

Here’s the setup. Connect the VCR to the Dazzle with a composite video (red, white, and yellow “RCA jacks”) cable. Connect the Dazzle to the PC with a USB 2.0 cable. From there you can use either the Dazzle’s included video editing software or Windows Movie Maker to import the video. Remember to select “highest quality” in whatever software you’re using to capture with. You’re preserving precious memories, not hard drive space.

The second scenario is digitizing 8mm video taken with an older analog camcorder, using the flow-through analog-to-digital converter built into a newer DV camcorder. We’ll say we’re importing the video into a Mac using the IEEE 1394 interface, commonly known as “FireWire” (Sony calls it i.Link).

Here’s the setup. Connect the old analog camcorder to the newer DV camcorder using the aforementioned composite video cable. Connect the DV camcorder to the Mac with the FireWire cable. At this point you’ll need to turn on the DV camcorder and select the flow-through option via menus on the camcorder’s view screen. When you import to the Mac via iMovie, you’ll always get highest quality, uncompressed digital video.

If you own a newer DV camcorder and have imported DV into a computer, you’ve probably noticed that you can control the DV camcorder (Fast Forward, Rewind, and Play) through the video editing software. In both of the above scenarios, however, you won’t have this nice feature available. You’ll have to Start, Stop, and Rewind the source players manually.

It’s your choice whether you want to digitize the entire tape, or pre-edit by reviewing the tape first and making notes, jotting down the starting and stopping times of the segments of the tape you really want to keep.