I have just bought an iMac. I have some video cassette tapes from about 20yrs ago - am I able to transfer from the VCR into my iMac? How do I do it?

You'll need additional hardware in order to digitize the analog signal from the VCR, I use this one

http://www.grassvalley.com/products/advc110

ElGato also makes some popular products but I'm not familiar with them.

You're welcome. You can't go wrong with the ADVC 110, but make sure you look at Elgatos products also, they may have something that works well for less money. Good luck, and enjoy converting your tapes, but don't wait much longer....20 year old tapes are in danger of degrading really fast.

The Elgato video capture works very well and is not very expensive at 99$

I second the Elgato. got one just a month ago and it's pretty easy. £79.82 from Amazon.

Are you using iDVD or something else to burn? Are you using DVD-R discs? Most dvd players don't like +R discs and some older players won't play computer burned discs regardless of what you use. Let me know what you're using.

DVD-r for sure. I've successfully used Maxell, Sony and Taiyo Uden discs. Maxell by far are my favorite.

One last thing...I almost forgot. In iDVD click on Project>Project Info and in the window that opens you'll want to make sure that the video mode is set to the correct setting, for USA use NTSC. You can also set the aspect ratio, encoding quality (I use High Quality) and name your Disc.

For the UK the setting is PAL.

I recommend the Grassvalley ADVC300. (Superior quality results compared to Elgato)

I've played around with countless other conversion systems, ranging in price from $79 to $399. Short verison, this is the ONLY unit to own. No dropped frames at all, even with questionable quality tapes, no jitter, great color, excellent sound quality. Zero setup with iMovie 06 and iDVD 09/11.

This is a prosumer deck. The time code function is alone worth the price if you have old analog footage. Absolutely NO "Out Of Sync" audio.

ADVC300 is for anyone who wants to do editing and is concerned about quality of color and speed, for the novice it is an incredible gizmo that will restore VHS tapes to a state close to the original fixing midtones, highlights and shadows on the fly. Not only can you simply convert analog to digital you can actually manipulate the signal going in (if you want to).

A bit pricey but it WORKS.

http://www.videoguys.com/Item/Grass+Valley+ADVC300/035303230363.aspx

Is it possible to record stuff from a VCR (yes - a VCR!)

Yes, it's very common. It's done every day.

I would use iMovie 06 with iDVD 09/11, why?

iMovie 09/11 uses 'single field processing' meaning every other horizontal line of the video is thrown out, which reduces the sharpness of the footage. iMovie 06 uses ALL of the image to form the video.

Your primary workflow is editing DV clips and making DVDs, iMovie '06 is better suited. Your movie will arrive at iDVD in DV format, which is an ideal match for making a DVD: same resolution, same pixels aspect ratio, and original quality. If you share your movie from iMovie 09/11, it gets re-rendered at 640x480 or less, and then iDVD upscales it back to 720x480. The end result is obviously not as good.

iMovie 06 and iDVD 09/11 is a "lossless" combination.

I would recommend Taiyo Yuden DVD+Rs. These are made in Japan, not China. (I get excellent results using iMovie 06 with iDVD 11.)

http://www.supermediastore.com/product/u/taiyo-yuden-silver-thermal-8x-dvd-plus- r-media-100

I have found DVD+R to be more reliable than DVD-R. The only disadvantage to DVD+R is that DVD players manufacture before 2003 may not play them.

DVD+R disks are better than DVD-R disks because of the increased error correction technique used in the newer +R standard.

I am ONLY a customer to the links above.