Beginner Needs Help

[jimbo62]

I am a confused beginner. I have managed to install DVD Shrink, copy a DVD movie to my hard drive as an iso image and burn a DVD from the iso image. And the burned DVD works just fine. The burning software I have is GameJack which will burn almost any iso image to CD or DVD.

But, I have a TV tuner/capture card for my PC that can be used to record movies from TV or from pre-recorded VHS tapes. There are several different formats that can be used for the recorded file(s). And the capture card came with software named ULead MovieFactory 2 SE. And I saw a post here that mentioned TMPGEnc DVD Author.

So my very limited understanding of the process is as follows.

1. Use the capture card to record a VHS movie to hard drive. (What type of recording should I make, MPEG, AVI, ???)

2. Use authoring software to combine the recorded movie with menus, titles, etc. and convet it to a DVD file? I am a little confused here. What kind of file will I get? My burning software needs an iso image. Will authoring software generate an iso image? Or is there another way to burn a DVD? If so, what software is needed. I have seen Nero mentioned, but I also see numerous negative messages about Nero.

3. If the file is too large, use DVD Shrink to reduce the size.

4. Burn the DVD. See (2) above. What type of file can I generate? Can I continue to use GameJack or do I need some other burning software to be able to handle the file(s) generated by authoring software?

Any insight will be appreciated. (Please don't tell me to go to videohelp.com, been there, done that, no real help.)

Thanks, jimbo62

[Comberman]

1. Capture to avi without compression if your system has the HDD capacity. Raw avi uses a lot of HDD space but if you have to do any editing, it is preferable to either Mpeg1 or 2 which are software compressed.
2. I use Nero BR 6 and have never regretted it. Nero can produce the appropriate DVD output and give you the opportunity to add Title and Chapter pages.
3. Nero has a file reduction module which under most circumstances will reduce a file without much loss so that it will fit on a standard DVD (4.32 GB).
Hope this helps