How to digitize old videotapes?

Digitizing old videotapes means you can protect aging footage by capturing it as digital files on your PC and burning it onto DVDs.
I wanted to transfer my favorite old films and home movies from their old videotape format to a DVD, so I could enjoy them on any PC with a built-in DVD player or on a standalone DVD player. The digitization process also lets you edit old video footage more easily and share it over a network or by email.
I also discovered that the image quality of old videotapes degrades over time and with repeated play, so I wanted to transfer my favorite old films and home movies to DVD as soon as possible.
Here's what I did:
Step by step
1. First I had to find out whether my PC had the right equipment, cables and software to link to my video recorder as well as recognize the video recorder's analog signal and convert it to a digital format.
There are a number of PCs sold as "media centers" because they have all the components and software you need to manage analog and digital data.
PCs with Intel® Viiv™ technology built in are a good example because of the advances this technology brings to integrated digital home entertainment. Also, some digital camcorders have "Analog-to-Digital Conversion with Pass-Through" technology that can convert analog signals into digital files on your PC.
My PC is not a media center PC, thus it doesn't have the components or software needed to digitize my old videotape footage. Also, my camcorder isn't equipped with "Analog-to-Digital Conversion with Pass-Through" technology.
So I bought a video capture PCI card (like the Hauppauge WinTV* card) and installed it on my PC, making sure to follow the instructions carefully. The WinTV card enables the PC to receive an analog signal from the video recorder and convert it to digital data.
2. Next I made sure I had the right software to capture my old video footage on my PC. Some PCI cards are sold with the video capture software included...and luckily mine did too. I opened the software and selected the "Create New Project" option and saved the video footage to my hard drive.
3. After creating my new project and giving it a name, I saved it as an MPEG (movie) file using the "Save As" option.
4. I then inserted an old tape into the video recorder and pressed "Play." The software recognized the video recorder and started to play the video footage on my monitor. I pressed the "Capture" button that appeared in the software's menu. I wanted to digitize all the footage on this video, so I let it play to the end—but it's possible to stop the video at any point and the software will stop capturing.
5. After capturing the footage, I knew the video was digitized and saved to my hard drive as an MPEG file. Now I could edit the footage using video editing software and burn the final MPEG file onto a DVD.