The trv-33 has great pass through tec. for the vhs conversion and thats great video off the sreen for the old reel films. I have tryed Dazzal and the ADS pyro and couldn't either to work even after sending the ads back to be upgrade. For those of you starting out getting a digital camcorder with passthroug tec. is the way to go plus its a great family caera for you home movies. Software I've been trying are Ulead to capture or pinicle I'm just starting to try because they save the files as avi and that will work with about and editing sofeware. I been using arcsoft showbiz because it's easy to brighten and cut clips .but the only bad thing is I can only figure out to export it to mydvd. Which is ok mydvd is pretty good at burning . I think next I need to lean to compress to get more in my dvds. Any advice on maybe some other softwares would be appreciated and I hope I help some others just starting. Ispent weeks of reading before I even started to buy anything . I would also like to thank the ones who've already help me so much.