Have you considered having the VHS (?) transfered to disc by a pro? This has become rather affordable and easy to find service. A local photography shop or lad should have information for you or even provide the service. Then you can just get him a gift certificate.

Failing that idea, there are software packages that have all the gizmos and software to help him get the job done. I think Pinnacle Studio is one of them. Not sure of the prices though.

The devil is in the details, and you haven't provided enough details for us to offer specific recommendations. Here's a 1 page overview of the basics. Assuming these are VHS tapes, and he has nothing in the way of video capture hardware already built into his computer, he'll need a VCR or camcorder to playback, a video capture card in his computer, cables to connect the playback device to the video capture card, and some software to manipulate the digitized video, and create DVDs. Some of the video capture card products listed in the above link are bundled with video editing software, too. A full editing bundle including a microphone for narration, software, video capture card, and other stuff, for a Windows XP desktop machine is the Pinnacle Studio Movieboard Plus.

Vista compatible video capture cards aren't as easy to find as Windows XP compatible devices (because of Vista DRM), but some laptops now come with video inputs, and are even bundled with video editing software suites, and Nero burning software, at least on a trial basis. USB 2.0 video capture devices avoid opening the box, and may be the only option for laptops without video inputs, but they're generally a lot less flexible than good internal video capture cards/TV tuners, and their limited bandwidth over the USB bus usually means they can't capture full frame, full rate video (usually limited to 720 x 480).

Recordable DVDs aren't as stable over time as CDs. Many people are discovering that DVD-R discs they burned only three or four years ago have become unplayable, so finding "permanent" ways to store digitized media really means committing to do backups, and keep the media transferred to new devices and drives as needed. At least every 2 years, someone in your family needs to look at this, if you want to keep your family videos available.

OK - he's got everything except the capture card, and he's an electronics engineer and can hook it all up with proper cables and will back up obsessively. I'm looking for just the card. I'll take a look at your links, paulsc, thanks.

If he's just going to do it once, consider using a company that does it - they're good and they have the latest gizmos so quality will be better.

Otherwise I reccomend the DAC-200 as an affordable gizmo to convert analog to digital and vice verca and it's really quite good for the price. Hell if he was around here he could get my DAC-100 really cheap because I just upgraded and don't need the old puppy.

Hiring someone would take all the fun out of it for him. The fun is in the DIY as far as he's concerned.

Thanks, dabitch, that's exactly what I'm looking for.