[Sussex] Video transfer - where to start?

[Gavin Stevens]

We have a few VHS-C camcorder tapes to transfer to DVD. I have received a new VHS-C adapter cassette from Maplins so that these tapes play in a standard VHS player. So far, so good.

Am I right in thinking that I need a video capture card (these presumably have the right holes in them to connect to a video player) in order to get the content onto my hard drive in the first instance? Does anyone have any recommendations regarding the best capture cards to use with Linux & the best places to get them?

Once the old tapes have been transferred onto my hard drive, I then need to be able to create DVDs that will play in a standard DVD player & behave in all respects like a normal DVD. Any suggestions as to the best software to use for this would be much appreciated.

As you can probably gather from the above, I have absolutely zero experience with respect to working with video in Linux (well, not just Linux - anything really). Audio work I do very regularly, but video is uncharted territory for me.

TIA for any help,

Gavin.