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[Scronch]

OK, you've got Kurt all set with an X10 for wireless sound.  Let's see how you guys do on this one...

What is the "best" (factoring in low price) way to convert video from a VHS tape to an .avi file?

Say that the PC is in place.  Let's consider only external hardware, that could be plugged into a laptop, for instance.  JimH listed some of these awhile back.  So I assume we need one piece of hardware to accept the VCR signal, convert it to something else, and send it to the PC.

Then, I assume we need some software (shareware? freeware?) to convert the big, fat video file into a nice, slim .avi file.

If this is formulated correctly, what hardware and what software?

Scronch

[Yaobing]

So I assume we need one piece of hardware to accept the VCR signal, convert it to something else, and send it to the PC.

Then, I assume we need some software (shareware? freeware?) to convert the big, fat video file into a nice, slim .avi file.

You do not need to go through a two-step process. All you will only need one piece of hardware - a video capture device. For use on a laptop, you can consider Hauppauge WinTV USB, or ATI TV Wonder USB. These devices plug into an USB port.

Just connect your VCR to the device, like you would connect it to a TV, and run Media Jukebox's TV program.

You can record the video into AVI files, with or without optional video compression (depending on what video compression codec you have on you computer). So converting " the big, fat video file into a nice, slim .avi file" is done directly if you configure MJ to use an available video codec.

In MJ version 9 you will eventually be able to record to Microsoft's WMV format (not quite available yet at this time, though you could get it by editing registry settings).

[Kurt Young]

I haven't done this yet, but if I did, here's how I'd do it:

I have a visiontek Xtasy Everything, which I use to watch TV via MJ.  It has a composite line-in, and MJ can view input from that too.  I'd use MJ to capture to uncompressed video (compressing on the fly typically results in terrible quality, at least, I haven't found a decent way to do it yet).  Then, once it's all captured in that gigantic .avi file, I'd use a program like virtualdub (in tandem with the divx 5.02 codec) to compress it down to a managable size.  This, of course, requires a very big partition and a good disk defragmenter to run once you're done.

http://www.visiontek.com/everything.shtml

http://www.virtualdub.org/

http://www.divx.com/divx/