Transfer your VHS tapes to DVD

Your VHS tape may have several seconds of dead air at the beginning, so make a practice run before starting the capture. While watching the VCR's counter readout, jot down the time the movie appears on your PC's screen. Then stop the tape and rewind it.

With the videotape fully rewound and ready to play, click Studio 9.0's green Start Capture button. This doesn't do what its name implies, though. Instead, a small Capture Video window appears. Give the capture a name and make sure the Stop Capturing After box allows sufficient time to complete the recording. You can set this to any interval you want, and the recording will conclude at the end of that interval. Begin the VCR playback and click the Start Capture button in the dialog box at the appropriate moment. Don't worry if it doesn't come out perfectly--you can delete dead space or other undesired content later on during editing.

A series of thumbnail scenes should appear in the Album window during the capture process. Use the Capture Source tab's Scene Detection section to configure the desired duration for each scene. Perhaps the most convenient option is No Auto Detection--just hit the spacebar whenever you want to start a new scene. Either way, the scene options have no visible effect on the capture; they're used later on for editing. You can remove any unwanted scenes, insert special effects, or resequence the film à la Quentin Tarantino.

Click the Stop Capture button when you're finished recording, unless you already specified the interval at which the capture will stop automatically.