James Slick Loc: Pittsburgh,PA

Since the dubs are from VHS to DVD the videos wouldn't be nearly 1080, VHS has a line resolution even lower than "normal" SDTV's 480i, So just about anything can deal with it and the Mp4s will be smaller (in filesize) than HD Mp4s - So at least they'll take up less space on what ever medium/device is used to store them.

therwol Loc: USA

The DVD drive in my 10 year old Dell laptop actually sits in a bay and comes out with the push of a button. I was going through my old things the other day and found the 3.5 inch floppy drive I can put in that bay. Since I have no content on any floppy discs, needless to say, it won't ever be used. I still use the laptop, however. It ain't broke and runs Windows 10 just fine.

James Slick Loc: Pittsburgh,PA

Yep! Can't argue. Dell knows how to make a durable laptop, Especially the Latitude Series.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Yep, they do. There are several Dell laptops in your house that are probably 10 years old and still functional - just not enough DRAM to run anything later than XP, but still useful for some specific tasks.

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

I like to get rid of a certain amount of clutter also, but my wife and I also like books. Like you I digitize a lot of things, and with 24TB hanging from my PC, it's easy to keep and back up digital copies of many things. I rip most of our DVD or Blu-ray disks, and we're digitizing certain other things, especially content that is rare of no longer available. Some stuff just isn't available in the US, so we have multi-region and multi-format players, as well as software that can circumvent the encryption. Like you, I also download the .pdf versions of manuals etc, or make a scan of the paper ones, it's so much faster to find them that way. I would say that we have about 8 feet of LPs, and although I have purchased digital copies of many, some just aren't available, but I can rip those also and digitize them. The main reason is to make the content available, and the album artwork often is interesting to us.

That much said, when in digital form, so long as the content is backed up it's very easy it's easy to recreate or convert to other formats, so I personally see no need for M-disks in preference to other media.

Cheers

Wanderer2 Loc: Colorado Rocky Mountains

As I mentioned in an earlier post I tried storing photo files on M Discs but was not successful using two different writers without success and gave up. I think the problem was with the software and have read in reviews this is a common problem with this technology. Can anyone tell me what hardware - software combination they've use for this successfully? Thanks.

therwol Loc: USA

Mine is a Dell Latitude D530 laptop, originally shipped with Windows Vista. It worked fine with Windows 7, 8, 8.1 and now works fine with 10. No issues whatsoever. I maxed out the RAM (4 gigs). I've upgraded the hard drive a few times, working for several years with a Seagate 750 gig hybrid drive until I recently put a Crucial 250 gig SSD in it with a clean install of Windows 10 32 bit. The Seagate had 32 bit and 64 bit on separate partitions. Windows 10 32 bit will run 16 bit software, like a few very old games my wife likes to play. I use this computer every day for my work from home in the evening.

I gave my son a Dell Vostro and a Dell XPS laptop from the same era. The hardware is almost identical. (The XPS has a dedicated video card.) I upgraded the hard drives, maxed out the RAM, and he continues to use them for his school work and for recording music.

There are a couple of drawbacks to these old computers. The RAM is inadequate for video editing. The USB ports are USB 2. I tried an express card to USB 3 port in my computer, and it just sat there dead. The computer wouldn't recognize it.

There is one advantage. All of these old laptops have a Firewire port for video capture from our old digital tape camcorders, though I'm done with that. I did appreciate having it.

(Download)

James Slick Loc: Pittsburgh,PA

Cool that you run 16bit stuff right on Win10! I've been using 64bit OSs since Windows XP (Yes,there was a 64bit version!) I've been using virtual machines to run 16Bit software. I've often wished I could just run some of it right on 10, Maybe I'll just build a purpose built 32Bit box and get 32Bit Win10!

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

Interesting, I've just been working on a Dell Vostro 320 for a friend, and it only has 2GB of memory, so it behaves like a constipated slug, but upping it to 4GB and a faster internet connection (currently 5 mbps) would probably do what she needs. It's W10 32bit, and actually up to date, but it did need a bit of deworming (OK PUPs) with Malware bytes. Definitely a bit more responsive now! I never found 1394a (firewire) a good way to transfer video to my computer, but to a DVD recorder works very well. Interesting stuff.

I'm not dissing Dell, my wife, brother-in-law in Norway, and my 90 year old mother-in-law all have Dell Laptops - similar models which is easier for me to support - and I've found Dell to be good to work with. Michael is both a nice guy, and a man of high integrity.

therwol Loc: USA

32 bit Windows in any flavor will run 16 bit software. The challenge with this particular game was that it was originally installed from floppies in Windows 3.11 on a computer that has long been discarded. When I tried installing it in Windows XP, still having a computer with a floppy drive, it got stuck when changing floppies. It turned out that by copying the software folder from the original computer and then creating a shortcut to the .exe file, the software ran just fine. I've done that on every computer since the original. (But this may not apply in your case if you actually have to install the software.)

In my case, and with this particular software, on first use, Windows tells you that it must install some files to make 16 bit work. (Apparently the files are in Windows itself.) After that, it works.

I've used virtual machines as you have, but this particular computer doesn't have the "muscle" to run two OS comfortably at the same time. So I gave up on 64 bit for this.

More information I just looked up. You may have to enable the NTDVM feature ahead of time to actually install such software. The instructions are here and only apply to 32 bit. 64 bit doesn't contain this feature.

https://www.groovypost.com/howto/enable-16-bit-application-support-windows-10/

jmizera Loc: Austin Texas

You cannot go wrong with ImgBurn. Simple and reliable, and free too.

therwol Loc: USA

I have two Sony Digital 8 camcorders that record digital video on tape. The ONLY way to get the video off of the tape (as files, not to watch) is to capture it in real time through 1394a. USB doesn't work. I have two dedicated DVD recorders, and I can transfer directly to DVD, but that does no good if I want to edit the video later. I have primarily used the free Windows Live Movie Maker for the capture, but it is no longer available for new installations. Exsate DV Capture Live is another free option. http://www.exsate.com/products/dvcapture/ Adobe Premier Elements removed the tape capture feature in version 13.

therwol Loc: USA

Thanks. I'll look into it. Reading some of the responses here have me wondering if I should really save this material as files rather than only DVDs.

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

To be fair, the Sony miniDV camera uses 1394a (iLink), and yes it doesn't support USB for video transfer, but copying the tapes via 1394a directly to a DVD recorder works better than to the computer for some reason. After that the DVD file can easily be transferred to the computer for editing / reformatting etc., but connecting the camera to the computer seemed to introduce a few problems.

therwol Loc: USA

Never had a problem. I have almost a terabyte of transferred video from digital tape to computer. I don't have it in front of me, but I'll tell you what happens. I connect the camcorder to the computer through 1394a. I turn on the camcorder. The machine recognizes it. I launch Windows Live Movie Maker. I go File-Import video. The software sees the device. I click to import the entire video. Under advanced options I choose one large file or separate files for different chapters. After clicking Next, the software automatically rewinds the tape, captures the video, and then makes an AVI file. (I left out the part about naming the file. Not important.)