Converting Home Video to DVD

[byczerson]

I want to make DVD’s of my home video. I thought it would be easy but soon found myself over my head and struggling to stay afloat in techno babble. I am looking for a simple explanation of what’s involved and what I need to do. I looked on various sites and couldn’t find anything. I cant be the only one trying to do this.

I have the following:

Sony digital camcorder
Adaptec FireConnect 4300 card
MGI Video Wave 4 software
Pioneer DVD-RW DVR-106D
And a PC with 30G free hard drive space.

So far, I have been able to capture video and make huge AVI files with MGI video wave 4. They come out at about 4 MB per second and the quality is not very good (as best as I can tell). This is where I get lost. It already looks like crap on my PC, and is too big. If I am going to reduce the size, will it get worse? (Probably so)

When I go down to West Coast Video and pay $3 for a rental, what format does it come in? How do I make one of those, at that quality/size level? That’s all I want.

Thanks for understanding, and your help
-Brett

[setarip]

If you click on "Rules" (toward the top of this page), you'll see that Rule #11 states,

"Do not post the same message in multiple forums - it will only mean that the people who frequently visits these forums (ie. the very people that can help you) will be annoyed by your multiple posting and will ignore you, or worse, delete your posts if they were admin/mods."

[rsquirell]

I didn't see a post in another forum, so I'll answer here. 30GB is not a lot of free space when dealing with video. You might try a 30 day trial version of ULead VideoStudio7. It'll capture your VideoCamera input thru the firewire and convert it to MPEG on the fly. One hour of AVI=12+GB...1hr of MPEG=1-3GB (depending on the bitrate of capture.) VS7 will keep your capture in digital resolution (720X480) all the way thru processing for a DVD burn.

[setarip]

To rsquirell

Would i lie?

This thread is an EXACT duplicate of the original, posted two days ago:

http://forums.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=25413

[rsquirell]

I knew you were right....but I looked for the other thread in Newbies...and after I couldn't find it I decided to respond here. Did anyone answer him on that other thread? If not, that might be why he posted again.

[setarip]

"If not, that might be why he posted again."

So what? - (Call me anal-retentive). The rules exist for a reason...

[rsquirell]

Chill, setarip. Kick back and have a guiness. The people asking the same questions over and over (identical or not) are enough to get anyone frazzed.

[setarip]

To rsquirell

"Chill, setarip"

I am perfectly "chilled out".

This fact changes nothing...

[rsquirell]

Do any snorkling in fajardo? Looked a bit shallow for scuba.

[byczerson]

Setarip,
I sincerely apologize. I did not see a response after a couple days so I assumed that I had posted in the wrong forum. I must say, that I did not read all the rules before I posted. In the future, I will change some words around so that it will not be the same. Again, I’m sorry.

Rsquirell,
Thank you for your suggestions. I will try ULead VideoStudio7. Is there anything else that I should know?

-Brett

[rsquirell]

No...if you have problems or if quality isn't great post again (in a new thread.) Sometimes you have to tweak editors.