I have a friend who was a fighter pilot in WWII and who was shot down and/or crash landed a number of times. An American movie studio photographer took a film of him crashing on a airfield in England after he had a wheel shot off over Germany. The film was used in a major war movie shortly after that and was later put on VHS.

The film is no longer available for sale on VHS or on anything else. I searched the web for him and he even contacted the studio to see if he could get copies of the film. They said that it was in the archives but was unavailable for reproduction any more.

He would like to make copies of the film for his family and friends before he leaves this world. He did get an original VHS of the film from a buddy but doesn't know how to get it copied to DVDs for his children.

THE QUESTION: What equipment would he have to buy, or where would he go to get the VHS tape recorded onto DVDs?

It's a potential waste of money to try and do this amateurishly. We can give you an answer and a list of equipment and software, and then he gets to spend a LOT of time trying to do it himself.

For something this important, I'd open the Yellow Pages to Video Production services and pay a local company to convert the video professionally and give him X-copies of the DVD to start.

It's much less problematic to make good quality copies of a DVD than it is to do what you're asking.