Easily Digitize a Videotape or DVD

I want to first explain why it has been so long since my last entry. As of May 1, I will be venturing out on my own with my practice. While I will still be handling personal injury and workers’ compensation cases, I will also be available for independent contract work to assist attorneys in digital presentations for mediation and trial. I am very excited about this transition and apologize for the delay this has caused in my posts.

Everyone, including myself, runs into problems converting a VHS tape or DVD to digital media. There are many reasons to convert VHS or DVD’s to digital media, from family albums to storage of vacation videos. As for an attorney, I think it is a necessity, then you can mail a deposition to another attorney or burn it on a CD for your client. You can save so much time and money by being able to digitize something yourself so you can watch a video deposition on your computer, put a video clip in your Powerpoint presentation, or just store your client’s deposition digitally on your server.

I won’t go into the ease of doing this on a Mac straight from your camcorder, though I can tell you it is much easier than Windows. The problem most people have with digitizing a VHS or DVD with Windows is figuring out what codec to use (the way the video is compressed), whether your computer has the proper input to get the video into your computer and often times, just not having your computer physically where your VCR or DVD player is located.

That’s where the Neuros MPEG4 Recorder 2 PLUS comes into play. At $139.99, the Neuros is extraordinarily simple to use. While it doesn’t have a lot of features, the one feature it does have, it does well; convert anything you plug into it into a digital file and save it on either a Compact Flash card or SD memory card.

What is so great about this is you don’t even need a computer to convert the VHS or DVD. No choosing the correct settings, figuring out codecs, buying video cards or hogging up computer resources as you import the video into your computer. The Neuros handles all the encoding and saves the video, or videos, as Quicktime movies on the flash drive. The quality isn’t quite DVD, but you won’t notice that much of a difference if you playback on a television. I was very impressed with this device and as you can see from the sample video on Neuros’ website, it’s pretty good at what it does. You have the option of saving the video in Economy/Normal/Fine and Superfine resolutions, depending on your needs. This means you could digitize video for playback not just on your computer, but your iPod or cellphone.

To start the conversion, you simply turn on the Neuros, hit play on the DVD, VCR or whatever device you want to record from, and hit record on the Neuros’ remote control. It’s THAT simple!

Now I just purchased a Canon HV-20 Hi-Def digital camera for use in my practice/consulting business and so I decided to video how the Neuros works. You can click on the link and watch the video streamed or you can download the video here ( just right click and choose “Save-As”). The video explains how easy it is to set up the Neuros Recorder. It’s an 18.5 MB file, so should take ~2 minutes to download via DSL.