• The Mac-Forums Community Guidelines (linked at the top of every forum) are very clear, we respect US law and court precedence when it comes to legality of activity.

    Therefore to clarify:
    • You may not discuss breaking DVD or BluRay encryption, copying, or "ripping" commercial, copy-protected DVDs.
    • This includes DVDs or BluRays you own. Even if you own the DVD or BluRay, it is still technically illegal under the DMCA to break the encryption. While some may argue otherwise, until the law is rewritten or the US Supreme Court strikes it down, we will adhere to the current intent of the law.
    • You may discuss ripping or copying unprotected movies or homemade DVDs.
    • You may discuss ripping or copying tools in the context that they are used for legal purposes as outlined in this post.

vhs to dvd

C

clarivocal

Guest
So, I have a fairly simple task that has suddenly become complicated. Basically, my friend has some home movie-type video tapes that he doesn't want to degrade anymore. I bought a dvd recorder, and transferred the tapes to dvd, but the only problem is that I can't make chapters. So, what I'd like to do now is take the dvds that I made in the recorder and transfer them to my mac. Then, I'd like to take them into iDVD and make chapters in there.

I know popcorn can transfer files to the harddrive, but I'm not sure if it will do the format I need (does iDVD work with formats other than .mov?). Can someone please help me? I need suggestions. I don't want to give up on this, because I think it's pretty important to my friend to have chapters (and I also really want copies of these dvds. It'd be nice to have chapters).

Thanks so much! I'd be happy to get any sort of help on the matter. You can reply here on the forum, or via e-mail.

Michal
 
surfwax95

surfwax95


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Well, ripping from a DVD, then re-encoding to something iDVD can read will degrade quality considerably. I'd recommend transferring the original VHS tapes to the Mac using an analog-to-digital converter, like this one by Pyro A/V. They use FireWire to get the analog footage onto the computer, and from there you can edit, create chapters, and burn.

Good luck.
 

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