By Cheryl Currid

Going digital? If your most important pictures are sitting in a cluttered shoe box or you’ve got a library of video tapes, it is time to think digital. Great photographs printed once to paper are too easy to lose and, no matter how well stored, video tape degrades in quality. 

Until recently, putting photographs or movies on CDs or DVDs was complicated, expensive, or required that you buy a whole new computer for the effort.  Now there’s an inexpensive and easy way to get the job done.

USB Instant DVD from ADS Technologies is a $229 device which does exactly that. With this magic box, you can connect your VCR or Camcorder to your computer and create a DVD (or video CD) in one step. It also lets you create and edit movies, add menus and special titles, and even narrate or add music to your work.

Aside from digitizing your movies and photos so they won’t degrade, the USB Instant DVD gives you an inexpensive way to copy and share your work. You can burn up to 4.7 GB to a DVD or 700 MB to a CD. The software lets you make a movie CD, in the VCD or SVCD formats. While it’s not as high of quality as a DVD, most DVD players are capable of playing video CDs. So if you choose to put your video project or home movie backup on a CD, it will cost about a quarter per disc.

USB Instant DVD includes an external media converter and all the cables you’ll need. It also comes with two software packages, Ulead VideoStudio 5 and Sonic MyDVD, which provide the tools to create and edit a DVD or video CD. 

Ulead VideoStudio 5 lets you make a complete DVD or video CD packed with menus, music, and clips from video tapes. It also has 30 video filters included which add Hollywood-like effects, as well as over 100 transitions to make your scene changes flawless.

Sonic MyDVD gives you a one-step method of taking a video to DVD or a CD. You set up the video, connect the cables, put in a few clicks to select your options and it takes over. If desired, the software divides your video into chapters automatically. It will locate creates a menu system that allows you to skip to any “chapter” with the click of a mouse.

The best part about creating a video CD using Sonic MyDVD is that it includes playback software on the CDs you create. So when you distribute the video CD to someone who doesn’t have the appropriate viewing software installed on their machine, it will automatically install the necessary software for them.

Hardware requirements are minimal. It requires only a 400 MHz computer (Celeron included), 128 MB of RAM, about 1 GB of free disk space for capturing and editing video, a full duplex sound card, 16 MB AGP video card, and, of course a CD-RW or DVD-Recordable drive. It runs on Windows 98 SE, ME, 2000 or XP. A version for the Mac has just been announced and should ship by October.

So if your budget is tight and the cost or complexities have caused you to pause, then USB Instant DVD could provide you a simple and inexpensive path to digital.