The digital era has brought with it new ways to store music and video, many of which have the ability to offer better quality than the older, analogue alternatives. And that’s all well and good, but what if you already have a large collection of records, tapes and video cassettes?

As these formats slowly slip into obscurity, and as the equipment needed to play them becomes unavailable, they could be hard to enjoy. Without taking action, we could find ourselves forced to buy new copies of music and video that we already own.

The solution to this could lie on your desktop. With a computer, the right software and a little know how, it’s possible to make digital copies of old music and video formats and transfer them to CDs and DVDs, or even turn them into digital media files for a portable player. In this way you can preserve your original investment with relatively little expense and bring all those old video and audio recordings bang up to date. And in this issue, we’ll show you exactly how.

Record breakers
Converting music and video from one format to another isn’t a particularly new idea. Many of us have recorded a vinyl LP to a tape that can be played in the car. The principle of using your PC to make digital copies is exactly the same, though the actual process of doing so may be quite different. The advantages of converting to digital are similar, too: you’ll be able to play your old records, tapes and videos in CD and DVD players, for example, or transfer them to a portable player to enjoy on the move.

We’ll get to transferring video tapes a little later on, but let’s deal with those records and tapes first. Converting music is effectively a two-stage task. First the music needs to be recorded to the computer’s hard disk, using a cable to connect the record or tape player to the PC’s sound input. Second it’s necessary to split the recording into its component tracks and convert them into either a music CD or a portable music file format, such as MP3. You’ll find a step-by-step guide on how to do this here.

What do you need?
Assuming there’s still a record player or tape deck lurking somewhere around the house, most people will already have all they need to make digital copies of their LPs and cassettes. Almost every PC has an audio input socket on it. It will usually take the form of a 3.5mm minijack socket somewhere near the output socket that connects to your computer’s speakers and is often coloured pale blue (rather than pink or green) and marked line-in.

In many cases, creating the initial connection between a PC and a record or tape player requires no further hardware, other than perhaps a cable with a minijack plug on one end and two phono plugs on the other to connect the player to your computer (these cost £4.49 from Maplin).

At the other end of the process, most people will have all the equipment necessary for creating a finished CD. Most computers now come with a recordable CD/DVD drive and software suitable for recording and editing audio as well as burning it to CD or making MP3 files. If not, then adding a CD/DVD writer to your computer won’t cost much (a drive that connects via USB will cost about £40) and most include software, such as Nero or Roxio Easy Media Creator, with audio recording and editing capabilities.

Alternatively, free software, such as Audacity, can be used to record and split the tracks, while Windows Media Player or iTunes will burn the finished songs to disc.