It's painful to think of your
8mm and VHS recordings fading away with years and use.
Converting them to DVD protects these treasured keepsakes,
and a pair of vendors are offering new packages to
simplify the process.
Converting taped home movies to
disc requires some equipment and know-how. Hewlett-Packard
has introduced DVD Movie Writer Dc4000, and Plextor
is shipping the ConvertX Model PX-M402U. Both made
their debut at the recent Consumer Electronics Show,
and should help ensure that your children will be able
to play your home movies for their grandchildren.
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HP DVD Movie
Writer Dc4000 |
HP's $299 DVD Movie Writer Dc4000 is scheduled to
become available in April, company representatives
say. The new Dc4000 is designed to improve on its slower
(and more format-limited) predecessor, the Dc3000.
The Dc3000 handled only the DVD+
writing formats, with DVD+R tapping out at 4X and with
DVD+RW capped at 2.4X.
The Dc4000, meanwhile, writes at
up to 8X on both DVD+R and DVD-R media and at up to
4X on either DVD+RW or DVD-RW. It adds the flexibility
of using both of the most popular media standards at
its higher level of performance.
The drive connects to your PC through
your USB 2.0 port.
Although the drive functions just
fine as a standard external DVD writer, it is aimed
at people who want to convert their recorded VHS, Hi8,
Digital 8, and Beta movies--assuming the source player
has analog output jacks.
The package includes a video transfer
wizard to simplify the transfer of clips and complete
tapes to DVD. HP says the new wizard will save time
by permitting improved background processing. HP's
software converts analog content to MPEG-2 format so
that it can be written to DVD.
The drive will ship with a suite
of video editing apps: ArcSoft's ShowBiz 2.1 editing
package and Muvee AutoProducer to produce and edit
music videos. Also included is ArcSoft PhotoBase 4.5
to assemble and write photo slide shows, along with
Veritas's RecordNow 6.5 and Simple Backup applications
for saving data, video, and music on DVDs and CDs.
The package also includes Cyberlink's PowerDVD DVD
movie player.
Plextor: For Those With Drive
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Plextor PX-M401U |
If you already have a rewritable
DVD burner , you can save money by buying Plextor's
ConvertX
Model PX-M402U video capture device.
You'll also reap the added benefit of its many conversion
options.
This model is expected to be available
by the last week of January. It improves on its predecessor,
the PX-M401U, by supporting the international PAL and
SECAM video standards along with the NTSC standard
that's most common in the U.S., according to Plextor
representatives.
Plextor also says its new device
will support real-time hardware DivX encoding, which
should dramatically shorten processing time by doing
the conversion as the video is captured to your hard
drive. Use of the DivX format allows you to put up
to ten hours of video on a rewritable DVD disc.
To use the ConvertX box, you connect
it to a video source (DVD player, VCR, TV, or analog
camcorder). ConvertX includes RCA composite audio/video
and S-Video inputs, and it automatically converts analog
video into a digital format.
Its full complement of capture formats
includes MPEG-1 (used for VideoCD), MPEG-2 (used for
DVD video), MPEG-4, and DivX. The unit hooks up to
your PC via its USB 2.0 port, a connection that easily
allows it to capture high-quality video.
ConvertX comes with the popular
WinDVD player and WinDVD Creator applications, which
are known for their ease of use. The Creator guides
the user through the process of capturing video, editing,
adding titles and putting in transitions, creating
effects, and adding music. To facilitate navigation
of your finished video, it also lets you build menus.
When you're done with your work, you can use it to
burn your final video to DVD, mini-DVD, or Video-CD,
using AVI, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, ASF, WMV, or DivX
movie file formats.
Whatever approach you elect, affordable
and easily usable tools are now available to help you
save your precious memories. Your tapes aren't getting
any younger.
MeritLine has
good deals on video to DVD devices!
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