From Digital Camcorder to DVD

[boby2kusa]

Hello,

I am a novice in multimedia and posting this message to get some knowledge on how to burn home movies capture on a digital Camcorder to a DVD that will be play-able on a standslone DVD player.

The digital camcorder captures the video in a Mini-DV media. The camera comes with a capturing software from the digital camera to either an uncompressed .avi file or mpeg1. I know as much as that when I burn an image to a dvd media that will be playable to a DVD appliance, it has to be an mpeg2 format and understand that it's not as straight forward as burning the mpg2 to the dvd, some kind of authoring need to happen. This is where my knowledge is lacking. I am confident that some one in this forum will point me to the right direction and give me information such as what softwares I need and the procedure to accomplish my goal.

thanks in advanced!!

[Crashed]

What software have you got?

[boby2kusa]

got ImageMixer to get the image from camcorder to PC in either .AVI or MPEG1 format.
Have TMPGenc to theoritically transform the AVI to MPEG2. Do not have DVD authoring softwar that I believe I need but not sure. Do I need anything else? oh yeah, Nero to burn it to the DVD.

[Crashed]

Image Mixer does that come with JVC DV/USB Digital Camcorders?

TMPGEnc DVD Author is handy to have.

You can capture into .AVI (is that DV format?)

[rsquirell]

AVI is DV format...capture through the Firewire and don't use MPEG1. If you used ULead Video Studio7 to capture your AVI-DV input will be converted to MPEG2 on the fly. You can either do some fancy editing using VS7's "Smart Render" to keep compression to a minimum, or take the unrendered MPEG2 straight into TMPGenc DVD Author for prep and burn (VS7 will also prep and burn the DVD- it's a one-stop solution.) You still need to prep the MPEG2 with an DVD author program if you want Nero to burn a Video DVD that'll play in a stand-alone player. With VS7 and TMPGenc DVD Author Nero is unnecessary.

[Crashed]

AVI is DV format

These days an AVI could be anything!

[rsquirell]

This is true...standards seem to be relaxed...but I believe all those VBR AVIs you're seeing are manufactured on the PC, posted and downloaded from the web. Captured DV has to have a standardized AVI format to be useful...any manufacturer who deviates will be slitting his own throat.

[boby2kusa]

Thanks for the reposponse rsquirell and crashed. One more question, what I have done is capture the movie from the Dig Cam in .AVI format. I then used the TMPGenc to tranform it to .M2V, using the wizard. Then the TMPGenc produces a .M2V and a . WAV file. I used the TMPGenc DVD Author to produce the files that I can burn to the DVD. TMPGenc porduces two folder Video_TS and Audio_TS, these are the two folder that I can easily drag and drop to the DVD media for Nero to burn.

After all taht I produced a Home Movie playable in a standalone DVD player, but I am a little disappointed with the result. It's not as sharp as thought it would be. It must be the way the TMPGenc transform it from .AVI to .M2V but I am not sure. Like I said this is the first time I tried this, I think I am lucky to even get a working end result. Does anyone know where I might do some tweaking to get a better result? The end product looks dull around the edges as if it's out of focus and it looks like it's skipping some frames as the pictures does not look fluid, I dont know how to described it other than it's not smooth.

Well, any tips would be appreciated.

[Crashed]

I have Image Maker (got it with JVC DV camera)
as I've never used it before (I use Studio 8 to capture DV
or other software, depending on what I need to do)
I will install it (when I have time) and see what it does
capture wise in .AVI. I Know my missus has it installed
on her laptop, but that has only got USB1 (no firewire)
so it only captures to VCD (MPEG-1) as she says.

I will install it on a PC with Firewire & see what gives..

[rsquirell]

There's going to be some degradation from the DV quality AVI when you convert it to MPEG2 just because of compression...but you need to eventually have a MPEG2 to burn a DVD. Does the captured AVI play jerky? You can run it thru VirtualDub and under "Video" have it scan for errors (save file with new name). You can clip the edges in TMPGenc in "settings">>"advanced">> "clip frame". Someone said his video was playing jerky, and he was able to correct it by changing "interlace to deinterlace" ( or vice versa). The interlace option can be found in TMPGenc also under the "advanced" tab. (Also, I really don't know what you've done...I believe yoou meant to say you made a MPEG2.mpg with TMPGenc...there is no reason to demux the file to the M2V video stream and Wav audio stream to go to TMPGenc DVD Author ( which will accept a TMPGenc-made MPEG2.mpg as is).