I just found out that Costco offers this service:

Costco - Home Movies to DVD Transfer Service DVDs From Videotapes, Movie Film and Slides (http://www.costco.com/Browse/Productgroup.aspx?Prodid=11486407&search=video%20tape%20transfer&topnav=&Mo=0&cm_re=1_en-_-Top_Left_Nav-_-Top_search&lang=en-US&Nr=P_CatalogName:BC&N=5000043&whse=BC&Dx=mode%20matchallpartial&Ntk=Text_Search&Dr=P_CatalogName:BC&Ne=4000000&D=video%20tape%20transfer&Ntt=video%20tape%20transfer&No=0&Nty=1&Ntx=mode%20matchallpartial)

They say however that the footage is only stored for playing on a DVD and cannot be edited using editing software:

"Raw Video Footage on DVD - We cannot deliver just the raw footage on DVD for you to edit using video software. Our DVDs are authored to play on a DVD player and to be enjoyed like a Hollywood movie. "

I'm going to give it a try for a couple of tapes and see if I can drag the footage into a Vegas Pro timeline.

Hi Bill

Over here the transfer guys simply use DVD recorders and then a source tape drive to feed it. The end result is a watchable DVD BUT remember it's now already just a bunch of VOB files that are highly compressed. I think you will be disappointed with bring VOB's back into your NLE as the already poor quality VHS is going to give you an MPEG2 file once the NLE converts it so a re-render will end up with even poorer results due to the format's GOP settings!!

If you have special material that needs editing rather find someone who will capture the tape to DV-AVI raw files so at least you can edit them!! or capture yourself on your 'puter. There are some very good hardware converters on the market that will allow analogue in and DV out via firewire.

Chris

From vague swirly-eddy memory, DV is compressed at a 1:5 ratio whereas DVD content is more in the vicinity of a 1:20 compression.

DVD is best used as a final end-product.

Andrew