I have hundreds of ‘home movie’ tapes ranging from the 1980’s full sizes VHS and SVHS, VHSC, Hi8 and finally mini DV.

With the impending demise of the domestic VHS machines I have set myself the task of transferring this collection to DVD.

My initial thoughts were to capture the footage into my PC, do some editing (cut out the crap!) then burn onto DVD. I weighed up how long this is likely to take and quite honestly don’t think I’ll live long enough to do it this way.

I weighed up the alternatives and eventually bought a Sony 510 DVD recorder with an 80gig HDD. I can now record onto this from any source via the video and audio ins. Then there is the dub facility to record down to single DVD-R discs.

I did actually want the facility to be able to down load the files, created in getting the footage, from the DVD into the PC for more creative editing. It doesn’t seem possible to make use of these files (.vob) for editing. I intend to use my Pinnacle 9 to make the more interesting clips into half decent movies.

Is there any way that the files can either be used (as is) or converted into usable file formats to be able to make use of the Pinnacle, or is there any other editing software that will fit the bill?

Thanks for looking and I would be very grateful to receive any relevant advice or real life solutions from anybody who has experienced the same problems.

Dabber