Whirlpool

Hi all, I have a stack of DV tapes that I've been too lazy to convert to DVD for the past few years.

There are so many products out there to use - which one do you use or
recommend!

my sassy gal writes...

There are so many products out there to use - which one do you use or
recommend!

First of all you need to tell us what you intend to make? Are you making the next Spielberg Blockbuster or just a home movie of the kids playing in the backyard?

If you want something that is easy to use but still reasonably powerful then Windows MovieMaker 2 (check the version on your computer if you dont have version 2 download it) is more than good enough and its free. Creating movie effects like fading between scenes or transitions or titles is easy and you can get good results.

Adobe Premiere Pro is quite good but I am assuming your DV tapes are home movies, if so, stick to movie maker. Premiere Pro is a heck of a lot harder to use and is expensive to buy, its only worth the money if you have the time to learn it and you are making a proper movie which you are going to sell.

nobodyinpartcular writes...

If you want something that is easy to use but still reasonably powerful then Windows MovieMaker 2 (check the version on your computer if you dont have version 2 download it) is more than good enough and its free

Does Windows MovieMaker 2 have an option to burn to DVD?

Yes my DV are home videos (birthday, xmas etc), but what I want to do, is to:
- able to edit scenes (delete unwanted scenes) and maybe add some minor effects
- include music in the background (hopefully mp3 supported)
- convert to DV to DVD format easily
- create a custom DVD Selection Screen - preferable with a photo background

I have not tried any of the programs above so wanted to hear some experiences from people who have ever tried creating Home DVD's. I have heard that it is very time consuming and frustrating.

my sassy gal writes...

Does Windows MovieMaker 2 have an option to burn to DVD?

No, if your computer is reasonably new it should have come with Nero or some other brand of DVD/VCD burining software.

Forget about DVD if you want something that will play in any DVD player just burn to VCD (VideoCD) using an ordinary Blank CD. VCD's are compatible with any DVD player, even the el cheapo ones.

If you burn to DVD it takes a heck of a lot longer to encode your movies to DVD format, whereas the encoding for VCD can be up to 4 times quicker.

DVD's also take a lot longer to burn than VCD's, VCD's can be burnt at 52x speed whereas you would be lucky to 16x speed with a DVD burner, also you got to take into account the fact that DVD is burning 2.5Gb of data per hour of video at 16x whereas VCD is burning 350Mb of data per hour of video at 52x, which do you think will be quicker to make.

Dont get me wrong DVD burning is great especially if you want to make a back up of your DVD collection, but for home movies VCD is a heck of a lot more effecient.

Yes my DV are home videos (birthday, xmas etc), but what I want to do, is to:
- able to edit scenes (delete unwanted scenes) and maybe add some minor effects
- include music in the background (hopefully mp3 supported)
- convert to DV to DVD format easily
- create a custom DVD Selection Screen - preferable with a photo background


Moviemaker can do all of this quite easily and quickly and you will be surprised at how easy it is to use, just save your movie as an mpeg to your computer once you have finished editing then burn the Mpeg you have saved to VCD using something like Nero

www.nero.com/nero7/eng/nero7-demo.php

my sassy gal writes...

I have not tried any of the programs above so wanted to hear some experiences from people who have ever tried creating Home DVD's. I have heard that it is very time consuming and frustrating.

From the sound of your requirements, do the capture & editing in Movie Maker, and to put it all together, i'd suggest Ulead DVD Movie Factory - it's a not very powerful or full featured, but it's a very easy to use DVD disc creator (with easy to use menu's etc).

I would not recommend to you any of the better featured programs, as they are more complicated than what you require and will involve alot of learning, which you'll probably find, you'll spend better time in actually doing the video!

nobodyinpartcular writes...

Dont get me wrong DVD burning is great especially if you want to make a back up of your DVD collection, but for home movies VCD is a heck of a lot more effecient.

VCD vs DVD? VCD faster? but how is the quality?

I thought the reason why DVD's are better is that the quality of the video will be much better than VCD as it holds more data? I thought that when copying DV videos onto the computer it will take gigs and gigs in its RAW mpeg format.

Wouldn't shrinking 10 gigs plus DV RAW VIDEO (Mpegs) of an hr footage into a VCD (700mb) be hard?

Sony Vegas

As long as you don't mind it "phoning home" every time you use it.

Wongdai

my sassy gal writes...

VCD faster?

much much faster

I thought the reason why DVD's are better is that the quality of the video will be much better than VCD as it holds more data?

The video quality is slightly better with DVD but the video codec DVD uses is not very efficient for example, one hour of DVD video would be equal to around 2.5Gb, because VCD's use a totally different Video codec one hour of video would only be around 350Mb.

BTW VCD's use an Mpeg Codec like your DV does (DVD uses a VTS codec).

Wouldn't shrinking 10 gigs plus DV RAW VIDEO (Mpegs) of an hr footage into a VCD (700mb) be hard?

You would not even be able to do this with DVD so I dont quite know what you mean there

nobodyinpartcular writes...

You would not even be able to do this with DVD so I dont quite know what you mean there

What I mean is that when transferring the DV files onto the computer it would be around 12 gigs for about an hrs worth of data, i just realised that would be in avi format (my bad)

WongDai writes...

Sony Vegas

yeh i use sonic vegas and love it

WongDai writes...

Sony Vegas

The only serious solution. Vegas its just awesome - being able to a full pro suite like this at home on a regular PC is a marvel. Once you get used to it you will never want to try anything else.

I'm still going through this drama. So far, I'd been quite successful with WinDVD Creator - until I got to something that was over say 1MB in size, and then it'd just crash and I'd lose all my editing.

Ulead just didn't work, for some reason.

WMM was really easy to use, but I had a lot of hassle burning the wmv to DVD, and there was a significant loss in quality.

So now I'm trying out Pinnacle.

I hope you have more luck than I've had!

capture with your favourite app (premiere or mediastudio work well) then use something like ulead dvd workshop or canopus procoder (too expensive for me) to convert/burn to dvd.

There's a decent review of the top pro-sumer editing applications here: www.dvguru.com/2005/11/2...n-linear-editors

Personally, I'd go with Premiere if you have the budget.

Also, don't forget about ebay. You can get some cheap second hand software off of ebay.
search.ebay.com.au/searc...e=Adobe+Premiere

As for a DVD authoring program, I like Tmpeg DVD Author - www.tmpg-inc.com/product/tsda_feature.html. It's probably not as easy to use as Ulead DVD Movie Factory, but I really like it.

nobodyinpartcular writes...

BTW VCD's use an Mpeg Codec like your DV does (DVD uses a VTS codec).

There's no such thing as a "VTS codec". VTS when used in relation to DVDs refers to the Video Title Set (collection of titles and menus).

VCD's use an MPEG-1 video stream with a data rate of 1150 kbit/sec and a resolution of 352 x 288 pixels for PAL and 352 x 240 for NTSC.

Video DVDs generally use MPEG-2 for the video but they do support the use of MPEG-1 and support both superior resolutions and superior bitrates when compared to VCDs.

The following copied from VideoHelp.com: What is DVD?.

PAL Video:
Up to 9.8 Mbps* (9800 kbps*) MPEG2 video
Up to 1.856 Mbps (1856 kbps) MPEG1 video
720 x 576 pixels MPEG2 (Called Full-D1)
704 x 576 pixels MPEG2
352 x 576 pixels MPEG2 (Called Half-D1, same as the CVD Standard)
352 x 288 pixels MPEG2
352 x 288 pixels MPEG1 (Same as the VCD Standard)
25 fps*
16:9 Anamorphic (only supported by 720x576)

NTSC (NTSC Film) Video:
Up to 9.8 Mbps* (9800 kbps*) MPEG2 video
Up to 1.856 Mbps (1856 kbps) MPEG1 video
720 x 480 pixels MPEG2 (Called Full-D1)
704 x 480 pixels MPEG2
352 x 480 pixels MPEG2 (Called Half-D1, same as the CVD Standard)
352 x 240 pixels MPEG2
352 x 240 pixels MPEG1 (Same as the VCD Standard)
29,97 fps*
23,976 fps with 3:2 pulldown = 29,97 playback fps (NTSC Film, this is only supported by MPEG2 video)
16:9 Anamorphic (only supported by 720x480)

Audio:
48000 Hz
32 - 1536 kbps
Up to 8 audio tracks containing Dolby Digital, DTS, PCM(uncompressed audio), MPEG-1 Layer2. One audio track must have MPEG-1, DD or PCM Audio.

* Mbps = million bits per second
* kbps = thousand bits per second
* fps = frames per second

References:
VideoHelp.com: What is VCD and XVCD?
VideoHelp.com: What is SVCD, CVD/CVCD and XSVCD?
VideoHelp.com: What is DVD?

my sassy gal writes...

VCD vs DVD? VCD faster? but how is the quality?

Without having read all replies here - The VCD's I've seen are worse than VHS.

Personally I would not want to go with VCD. Yes, DVD takes more time but also much better quality.

Have not experienced compatibility issues with DVD's I have produced with ULEAD DVD Movie Factory 3. Ulead products take some time to get used to them but I got my software free with my DVD writer - basically free - and the results are good enough for me. I'm mostly converting VHS to DVD.

If there is a chance you will use your material again do not discard or reuse the tapes. There is a loss in quality if you go from DV to DVD. Also for long term storage DV tape is considered the best option.

PeterM writes...

The VCD's I've seen are worse than VHS.

You have been looking at some crappy VCD's, the ones I create are around the same quality as Analogue TV broadcasts which is slightly worse than DVD but a lot better than VHS.

I would recommend a Sony Movie Studio, a somewhat cut-down version of Sony Vegas.

It maintains majority of powerfull tools, yet the interface has been simplified and filled with very helpfull Wizards.