The truth is, its not that difficult at all, especially if you have a good home computer, the right software and some additional hardware.

The most consumer friendly software/hardware on the market these days, comes from a company called Pinnacle. They in fact are part of the Avid group who are actually who the pros use for their software and harware needs.

Pinnacle offers a whole suite of very consumer friendly video transfering tools.

Since the Mac is growing in popularity, we set out to take a look at the Video Capture for Mac from Pinnacle .

Its really simple to use. In one end of this device you plug in your rca and video cables from your VCR (red, white and yellow for those who are already lost). The other end of the device plugs directly into your USB port.

Since the encoder is actually in the bobble thing, your Mac's processor is free to continue doing other things.

Once created your videos are automattically added to Itunes, so you can easily export them to your Ipod.

The only thing you should be aware of is that the hardware encodes in real time, so if you have a long video, make sure you have the free time to monitor the encoding and likely enough hard drive space.

Would love to know what software and hardware you use to encode your analog video.....