Memories and vhs tapes are not eternal. dvds can live longer. If your large collection of family movies and home videos is on vhs, you should consider converting it to dvd. If you leave it on vhs, it can soon die because the quality of vhs recordings gets poor over time. Additionally, if you play your vhs movies frequently, this wears them out additionally. So, if you want to save your vhs memories� hurry up and convert them to dvd. There are plenty of ways to do it. The process of converting vhs to dvd is not as easy as with most other formats because most vhs videos are recorded only on tapes and not on other media.

If you have a portable video device, you can watch movies wherever you go. Portable video devices include iPods, Palm, Zune video, and several other devices. It is quite understandable, if you have dvd and want to convert your movies to a format, which is playable on portable devices. There are many programs for that purpose. Videora is one of them. Videora allows you to convert your videos straight away and you can quickly have them in a format for your iPod.

The easiest way to convert vhs to dvd is to get an outside company to do it for you; of course, this will not be the cheapest way. If you choose to get an outside company to do it, they will convert all your vhs tapes and you will get them back in the form of dvds. This makes it a more permanent memory and is easier to store.

If you want to deal with the conversion personally, there are many options. As a rule, these options require a lot of time. One of the most time consuming steps is to capture the vhs video via an analog-to-DV converter. You need to encode the video in MPEG-2 format and author a dvd. If you would like to edit your videos, analog-to-DV conversion is the way to go. However, you should know in advance, that finishing just one hour of video will take you hours or even days!

Another option for vhs to dvd conversion that is a little quicker is if you capture the vhs video using a hardware capture device that will convert the vhs to MPEG-2. This limits the options you have for edit-ing, but one hour of video is one hour of work. Once you have it on your computer as MPEG-2, you can burn it to a dvd.

If you have your home video on your camcorder then you can simply attach the device to a standalone dvd recorder. This vhs to dvd conversion is simple and straightforward and will copy your vhs and create dvds for you. This version works best if you want your video exactly as it is, with no cuts or edits.

As you can see there are many vhs to dvd conversion options. The option you choose will depend on how much time you have, how much money you have and how many edits you want done.

Isaiah Henry is a writer on dvd ripper solutions. Visit DVDShrinkNow.com for more information on dvd copy and dvd rippers software like DVD neXt COPY review.