# Mulder's Guide to Burning VCDs and DVDs from Home Movies



## Mulderator

It seems there are quite a few threads started with the same question: "How do I get video from my camcorder to my computer and burn it to a CD/DVD?". I thought it would be good to have this one thread to use and "stick it" so that people can just refer here. Also, the following is *my experience* and by no means exclusive. Feel free to add your own tips and build this thread into a nice resource. As the cost of DVD burners, digital camcorders, and hard drive space has come way down and the use of DVD players at home gone way up, putting home movies on DVD is something everyone is going to want to do eventually. And needless to say, Mulder has a ton of home movies to transfer to DVD! 

You can skip all the detail here and go directly to "Quick Recap" if you are adventurous!

First, for those that do not know anything about getting video from your camcorder into your computer, there are primarily two ways to do it at least these are the two most common ways. If you have a digital camcorder, I would recommend only one way and that is to have a Firewire PCI card (you could also use a harware encoder and/or USB transfer), but I'll leave that for someone else to discuss).

******************UPDATE --2-13-05*************************

I wanted to update this thread because there is finally a product that does a good job encoding to MPEG--an external hardware encoder so this is *the method I would recommend*:

http://www.adstech.com/products/USBAV702/intro/usb702intro.asp?pid=USBAV702

With the above, you can encode MPEG in real time directly from a VCR or camcorder to the hard drive. With that, you *eliminate Step 2 below* (encoding to MPEG):

If you have a digital camcorder, this is the same product with a firewire port:

http://www.adstech.com/products/USBAV_703/intro/usb703intro.asp?pid=USBAV703

********************END OF 3-13-05 UPDATE*****************

Here is an example:

http://sewelldirect.com/firewirepcicard.asp?s=google&g=cp2ag2&a=firewire_card_22

I am not necessarily recommending that one--just grabbed the first one I found on a Google search.

That card snaps into any open PCI slot in your computer (very easy to installjust open the computer box and snap it in place). Your digital camcorder probably came with a firewire cable and if not, most of the firewire cards come with them or you can get one at any AV store or Radioshack, Goodguys, etc, but they will be cheaper on the Internet. Also, your computer (if you bought one in the last few years) may have already come with a firewire card installed).

Here is a firewire card that comes with the cable and software for editing the video for $22 so that seems like a pretty good deal:

http://sewelldirect.com/firewirepcicardwithUlead.asp

For those of you who know nothing about opening a computer and installing hardware, you can get help in the hardware forum, or you could just bring it to CompUSA or another computer store, buy the firewire card there and they will put it in for you.

Once you put the firewire card in, you just plug one end of the cable to the card and the other to the camcorder's firewire port and then you need software to capture the video. Any of the video editing software programs that I will discuss below will capture video or as noted in the link directly above, that firewire card comes with software. You probably have a program that came with your computer as well.

The other way to capture video (and you would only want to do it this way if you had an analog camcorder rather than digital) is through your computers video card and it would have to be a card that has that capability (most of them do). However, if you capture video through your video card, you will lose some quality because you will be truly capturing through an analog device. With a digital camcorder, the firewire card doesn't actually "capture" in that sense, it simply transfers the digital file from your camcorder to the computer with zero loss of quality. So if you want excellent quality, I would highly recommend buying a digital camcorder if you do not already have one.

I should also mention that video files are hugeabout 1 Gigabyte for every 4 minutes of DV AVI (thats the format most of the popular smaller digital camcorders use now and it is compressed AVI). What you should do to avoid dropping frames when you capture (you dont want to drop frames because it reduces the quality) is have a separate hard drive that is dedicated just to video editing. That separate hard drive should be at least 60 GigabytesI recommend 120 Gigs or more. And hard drives are very cheap now. They are a bit more tricky to install so unless you are good with computers, I would recommend getting help in the hardware forum or again, having someone else install a separate hard drive in your computer. You dont need that, but it really helps to reduce the loss of frames when capturing.

Now, once you get the video onto your computer, I recommend that you have three separate programs--you don't need all three, but I have learned over much trial and error and found it to be the best way to accomplish good high quality DVD productions relatively cheaply and easily.

*Step 1--render (create) your movie*

The first program is one that you would use to "render" the video and it has neat things like you can add text and you can add effects, etc. The program we used and have been very happy with (researched it a lot) is Sony Screenblast Movie Studio (retails for $99). You can add music and fade scenes in and out, slow them down, speed them up, etc. Here is a link to the Screenblast program:

http://www.screenblast.com/main/content/index.jsp?name=software_main&menuPath=/software/index.jsp#

You can also use Windows Movie Maker, which is free! (I didn't like it near as much as Screenblast):

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/moviemaker/downloads/moviemaker2.asp

*****Edit 6/23/04
Interestingly, Screenblast 2 was PC Mag's Editor's Choice but SB 3 did not fare near as well in 2004. Here is a recent article ranking the top movie editing programs:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1604704,00.asp

Some like Ulead 8 (Editor's choice this year) have a free trial version whereas SB 3 does not, so I would try the ones with the free trials to see what you like--much of it will be personal preferences.

*****End Edit

You can actually use those programs to capture the video as well.

Next, when you are done making your movie, output it to DV AVI using Screenblast.

***********3-13-05 Edit************************
If you buy the Instant DVD-DV hardware encoder, then you would choose to encode it with an MPEG encoder rather than AVI
***************End Edit**********************

Make sure to output it on your hard drive, NOT to a DVD (and don't use the "uncompressed AVI" which is the default on Screenblast--use the DV AVI selectionagain assuming your native format of your camcorder is DV AVI). You could actually burn it directly to DVD from Screenblast or encode it directly to DVD format to your hard drive, but I find that the program doesn't encode the video as well as other programs, which I will discuss next.

*Step 2--Encode the movie to MPEG-1 (VCD) or MPEG-2 (DVD format)*

***********3-13-05 Edit************************
If you buy the Instant DVD-DV hardware encoder, then you would skip this stet!!!!

***************End Edit**********************

There are two types of hardware devices that burn to discseither a CD burner or a DVD burner. With the first, you must burn in VCD (Video CD) format. That is not as good quality as a DVD and some DVD players will not play VCDs. I recommend that you use a DVD burnerif you do not have one, (you can get them for $100 or so now and they are pretty easy to install in your computer (just pull out the CD burner and connect the same cables to the DVD burner and if you are using Windows 2000 or XP, it should be no problem being recognized automatically). But again, you could buy it at a computer store and have them install it for you.

The "encoding" is what is done to the AVI file to make it compatible for burning to a VCD or DVD. The DV AVI is "encoded" (compressed even more than DV AVI) to MPEG-1 (VCD) or MPEG-2 (DVD) format. Good programs for encoding to MPEG are:

Cinema Craft Basic Encoder ($58) (the best quality)

http://www.visiblelight.com/mall/productview.aspx?cat=201&pid=7

TEMPenc3.0 Express Encoder (also $58) (very slow but very good quality).

http://www.pegasys-inc.com/en/product/te3xp.html

or MainConcept MPEG Encoder ($108) (very fast, but a little less quality then the others)

http://www.mainconcept.com/mpeg_encoder.shtml

All of the above are very good quality--TEMPenc Express has the best user interface and easiest to understand, but it is the slowest of the three. Cinemacraft is probably the best quality result, but the other two are very close.

You take the DV AVI file you just created with Screenblast (i.e., your finished movie) and use one of the above programs to "encode" it to VCD or DVD format (i.e., MPEG-1 or MPEG-2). There are basically two formats that have to do with television standards in countries. Most of you will use "NTSC" and should choose that standard to encode your video. Some of you in other countries outside North America will use PAL. Here is a link for more information and a list of countries that use PAL.

As a side note, as mentioned above, you could also use a hardware encoder, which is another card that you'd have to install in your computer. That would encode the video as its coming in from your camcorder. I'll leave that for someone else to discuss because I don't use a hardware encoder. The advantage is it is much faster than a software encoder and doesn't make heavy use of computer resources.

*Step 3--Create DVD menus and burn the DVD*

Finally, you need what is called a DVD authoring program. That program is what you use to take movies you've encoded and then create nice menus like on commercial DVDs. For example, you might make three different movies on Screenblast, then encode them to three separate MPEG files, then use the DVD authoring program to create a menu that appears on the DVD to then select which movie you want to watch and burn all three to the one DVD. So your finished DVD starts with a first menu allowing you to select however many movies you've put on that DVD. This is good because DVDs are large (4.7 Gigs) and most people make shorter vinets of their home movies rather than long marathons that can get boring (not to mention how large the file would get). So I recommend making smaller movies up to about 20 minutes maximum. You might, for example, burn 5 to 10 smaller movies on one DVD using a DVD authoring program to burn them all in one shot and create menus to select them (typically you can get about 60 plus minutes on a standard one-sided DVD). You can even create chapter markers to move around in the video just like in DVDs you rent.

The DVD authoring program I use is ULead DVD Movie Factory [retails for $99]

http://www.ulead.com/dmf/runme.htm (Screenblast also comes with one called "Sonic MyDVD" which I did not like as much, but it eliminates the need for buying a separate DVD authoring program).

Now keep in mind that you don't actually need all these programs, but you will find that the movie production programs such as Screenblast do not do as good a job at encoding to MPEG format as the programs I listed, so you get better quality movies using a good encoder. And Screenblast (or other movie production program) typically does not do DVD authoring (which allows you to create menus. If you want, you could just take the DV AVI file from your camcorder and capture the video directly into Ulead DVD Movie Factory and it would also encode it and burn it directly to DVD (in that case, that is the only program you would need). But again, Movie Factory is not as good an MPEG encoder and you cannot do many of the editing things you can do with Screenblast.

*All of the programs (except Screenblast) I listed have the option to try them before you buy them*, so go ahead and do that (but remember you only need one of the MPEG encoders, either Cinemacraft, TEMPenc, or Mainconcept, but NOT all three, but you can certainly try all three). You can download Windows Movie Maker to use instead of Screenblast to try out the system. If you follow the format I gave you above (which I've learned by much trial and error) you will be very satisfied with the end product and your relatives will be envious of your high quality DVD movies!

It is not really as difficult as it seems. But as with most things in life, the reward comes from the struggle and if you follow the above steps, you will be VERY satisfied with the results and will be able to make your own high quality DVDs or VCDs. Download and install the trial versions of Windows Movie Maker, TEMPenc3.0 Express Encoder (because it has the easiest user interface and does not add any watermarks) and Ulead DVD Movie Factory and go ahead and follow the steps 1 to 3 and see how you like it. It is well worth the $260 or so for the three programs. You can probably find those programs even cheaper from secondary wholesalers on the Internet and possibly do it all for much less.

*Quick Re-Cap to try system*

1. Download Windows Movie Maker--it's the only free one or the trial version of Ulead VideoStudio (I like Screenblast better, but there is not a trial version) to transfer your video from camcorder to your computer (remember you need a firewire card or video card that will capture) and render your movie to AVI file on the hard drive.

2. Download the trial version of TEMPenc3.0 Express Encoder and encode your AVI file to MPEG-1 (for VCD) or MPEG-2 for DVD. Most of you will use the NTSC format rather than PAL (Some countries will use PAL).

3. Download the trial version of  ULead DVD Movie Factory to take the MPEG file you created above and burn it to VCD or DVD.


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## Mulderator

BTW--feel free to post questions in this thread as well.


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## MustBNuts

Nice job Mulder! 

The only thing I would add is to keep in mind that DVD players will only play VCDs and/or DVD-Rs if the player states that it does. Do not assume that if your player refuses it, it must be the disk.

Also, you may want to create and hold on to an AVI version of the final project in case you want to then create generic PC versions of your movies or highly compressed .WMV's for posting on the internet, the AVI will be a good quality version and minimize the chance of suffering quality degradation.

Again, great post Mulder!

MBN


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## Deathblow

Here's a great link for compatibility of DVD players with different media/file types.

http://www.videohelp.com/dvdplayers.php


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## Mulderator

MustBNuts said:


> Nice job Mulder!
> 
> Again, great post Mulder!
> 
> MBN


Ahh, what else would you expect from Mulder?


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## MustBNuts

Now you see, that's the Mulder I was expecting!  

MBN


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## Mulderator

MustBNuts said:


> Now you see, that's the Mulder I was expecting!
> 
> MBN


I did not know you were expecting Mulder! I will be right over!


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## owhong

Hi Mulder

You have made the most useful guide I have so far seen on my search to learn digital video. Thank you very much. I am registering to ask you a few questions. Hope you will still read this thread.

1. You mentioned that you prefer screenblast over WMM2. This is the first time I come across screenblast. Can you let me know what makes you prefer screenblast over WMM2? What I like about WMM2 is its title features, which I can't find in any video editing software I have encountered. E.g. subtitle, news video inset, news banner, moving titles layered, etc. I also kinda try out the Primier (but couldn't get it work much, its hard to use for a beginner like me) and couldn't find these useful title features there.

2. The only way to get MPEG video from WMM2 is to save the video as DV AVI, and then encode using other encorder into MPEG. Am I right? Is there any difference in quality of the AVI file produced by WMM2 and screenblast, and also other AVI encorder (may be using VirtualDub, etc)? I am not sure what AVI encorder does WMM2 use. Is it standard item in all software producing DV AVI?

3. Is there anyway to directly use CinemaCraft Encorder from within the WMM2 or screenblast?

4. Why do you call it as "render" instead of "editing"?

Hope this post is not too long and hope to hear your reply. Thank you.

Regards
owhong


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## Mulderator

owhong said:


> Hi Mulder
> 
> You have made the most useful guide I have so far seen on my search to learn digital video. Thank you very much. I am registering to ask you a few questions. Hope you will still read this thread.
> 
> 1. You mentioned that you prefer screenblast over WMM2. This is the first time I come across screenblast. Can you let me know what makes you prefer screenblast over WMM2? What I like about WMM2 is its title features, which I can't find in any video editing software I have encountered. E.g. subtitle, news video inset, news banner, moving titles layered, etc. I also kinda try out the Primier (but couldn't get it work much, its hard to use for a beginner like me) and couldn't find these useful title features there.


What I liked most about it was it had Wizards that made it very easy to learn. WMM2 was more clumsy and hard to figure out. But again, I think it comes down to personal preference. But Screenblast does not do some things well, which is why I recommend a 3-step approach. Take a look at this article:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1604704,00.asp

Interestingly, Screenblast 2 was PC Mag's Editor's Choice but SB 3 did not fare near as well. Again, as I mentioned earlier, this is my *personal experience* and certainly not exhaustive. I know Pinnacle is highly reputed as a very good program and I am sure Ulead does a good job as well, but I expect all are better than WMM2. BTW--Ulead Video Studio 8 also has a free trial and since that was an Editor's Choice, I would certainly recommend trying that out as well as WMM2 and any others that come with free trials.



owhong said:


> 2. The only way to get MPEG video from WMM2 is to save the video as DV AVI, and then encode using other encorder into MPEG. Am I right? Is there any difference in quality of the AVI file produced by WMM2 and screenblast, and also other AVI encorder (may be using VirtualDub, etc)? I am not sure what AVI encorder does WMM2 use. Is it standard item in all software producing DV AVI?


I don't know if DV AVI is the only way to render video with WMM2. I would think that it has an uncompressed AVI choice, doesn't it? I do not believe there will be any noticeabledifference in AVI outputs because it isn't compressed. As for DV AVI, unless your original input is uncompressed AVI (unlikely because its so large), it really does not make a difference--its DV AVI to DV AVI. Although I do not know that for sure. Best thing to do is to try it and see if you notice any difference in programs.



owhong said:


> 3. Is there anyway to directly use CinemaCraft Encorder from within the WMM2 or screenblast?


Not that I am aware of.



owhong said:


> 4. Why do you call it as "render" instead of "editing"?


That how most of the programs refer to making a movie (i.e., rendering it).


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## LeeBerlik

That's a great guide. I wish I had read it earlier. For the past year or so, I have been using Movie Maker to create home movies in .WMV format and have been saving them to my hard drive. Now I'd like to burn them to DVD. Is that possible? If so, what kind of conversion software do I need? Many thanks.


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## owhong

Hi Mulder,
Thank you very much for the reply. There is one thing I found in WMM that no other video editing software, I have, does is its ability to use IME. I am able to enter non-alphabet characters in WMM but not in Premier, etc. If you know about any software that allow one to enter non-alphabet characters (in particular, Chinese), I would be most grateful to learn from you. My search (months) in this has not been successful yet. A problem with WMM that I am facing is that it does not take in MOV files that I record using my digi cam. I am still in search of right tools for myself. I am trying to get my hands on Screenblast.
Regards
owhong


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## Mulderator

owhong said:


> I am trying to get my hands on Screenblast.
> Regards
> owhong


I would suggest trying as the top ones: Screenblast, Ulead, Pinnacle, etc, listed in the article above from PC Mag. You can find trials for most.

I am going to try the new version of Pinnacle as it supposedly improved significantly on some of the problems I had with previous versions. I tried Ulead's (the Editor's choice) and didn't like it as much as Screenblast. Again, I think much of this is personal preference.


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## Mulderator

LeeBerlik said:


> That's a great guide. I wish I had read it earlier. For the past year or so, I have been using Movie Maker to create home movies in .WMV format and have been saving them to my hard drive. Now I'd like to burn them to DVD. Is that possible? If so, what kind of conversion software do I need? Many thanks.


You cannot burn DVDs from Movie Maker, but you can use a movie created in Movie Maker and use another program (like Ulead's Movie Maker Disc Creator 3 noted in the first post) to burn the DVD. You see, it is really a 3-step process. You make the movie. You encode it to the format needed for DVD, then you burn the DVD. Some programs do all three (like Pinnacle and Screenblast), but I really think that none of those "do it alls" do them all well. That's why I use different programs for different steps. This is really a complicated process for your computer so you will find that it just works much better split up into different tasks not to mention the encoding programs just do a better job at encoding and that makes a difference in the final quality of the movie. Again, I suggest experimenting to see what works best on your system.


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## fantavet

Cinema Craft Basic Encoder ($58) (the best quality)

This is a stand alone product correct? I saw in the system requirements that it was a plug in for Adobe Premiere. Do you need Adobe also?


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## ron24151

nice, but still confussed a bit here, If I have a dvd rw, what else do you need? hoow does the camcorder/vcr (like to copy old tapes to dvd) hook to the comp, doyou need a pci slot or something? thanks bear w/ me real newbie when it comes to this here transfering stuff.. thank you ron


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## Mulderator

fantavet said:


> Cinema Craft Basic Encoder ($58) (the best quality)
> 
> This is a stand alone product correct? I saw in the system requirements that it was a plug in for Adobe Premiere. Do you need Adobe also?


No, it is a stand alone. And the "best quality" was my opinion based on the 3 I tried--there may be others that are better, but those three are pretty highly regarded at the price level. You can get encoders that cost thousands of dollars.


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## Mulderator

ron24151 said:


> nice, but still confussed a bit here, If I have a dvd rw, what else do you need? hoow does the camcorder/vcr (like to copy old tapes to dvd) hook to the comp, doyou need a pci slot or something? thanks bear w/ me real newbie when it comes to this here transfering stuff.. thank you ron


The way your computer hooks up to the camcorder/VCR depends on what kind of Camcorder. If it is digital, the best way is with a firewire card (I394) that plugs into a PCI slot. If it is analog (older models), then you would capture through a video card that has capture capabilities. With a VCR, it would be a video card as well (with capture capability). There are other ways, but those are by far the most common.


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## carrie_uk

I have edited my movies with Pinnacle studio 9. Then I created DVD's with Pinnacle. Then I made MPEG2 file so I could get rid of the very large file. My question is if I wanted to make another DVD of the same thing, how do I do it with the MPEG2. I have Nero 6 that I have made VCDs with before, but can't work out how to make the DVD's with it

Thank you for any help

Carrie


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## Sheza20

Well I just bought a new laptop with a dvd burner in it and it came with a Win DVD creator platium cd and I just made a 45 min dvd from it. it has the Capture from camcorder or vcr, edit, author, and make movie selections, from the little I played with it, I also saw different effects and adding text and sound. Very user friendly has a wizard that walks you through everything. I'm sure that after using the wizard you would understand the program and figure out the other features rather quickly.


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## Mulderator

carrie_uk said:


> I have edited my movies with Pinnacle studio 9. Then I created DVD's with Pinnacle. Then I made MPEG2 file so I could get rid of the very large file. My question is if I wanted to make another DVD of the same thing, how do I do it with the MPEG2. I have Nero 6 that I have made VCDs with before, but can't work out how to make the DVD's with it
> 
> Thank you for any help
> 
> Carrie


Pinaccle 9 should be able to burn a DVD from an MPEG-2 file. But if it doesn't, then Ulead Disc Creator 3 will for sure because I've done it. It should go much quicker because it won't encode it (it is already encoded to DVD format), it will just burn it. Nero should also do it as well, but you may need the upgraded one (if you have the free one) to burn DVDs.


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## carrie_uk

I will try and investigate the unlead. I have as yet to work out if you can do it in pinnacle and I do have the latest Nero. I press on DVD video and it says 

'the file is larger than 2GB and therefore cannot be stored on an ISO file system. Please use the UDF file system to write such large files. This can be done by selecting another compilation type.'

What does that mean?

Carrie


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## Mulderator

carrie_uk said:


> I will try and investigate the unlead. I have as yet to work out if you can do it in pinnacle and I do have the latest Nero. I press on DVD video and it says
> 
> 'the file is larger than 2GB and therefore cannot be stored on an ISO file system. Please use the UDF file system to write such large files. This can be done by selecting another compilation type.'
> 
> What does that mean?
> 
> Carrie


It means you are not burning it as a DVD compliant MPEG-2, I think. I do not know anything about Nero, so can't answer specifically, but I do know there is no limitation of 2 GB for DVD video. I am sure you can do it in pinnacle, at least the later full versions (8, 9). You may have a limited version that requires an upgrade. I also know you can do it with ULead Disc Creator 3 or TEMPGenc (see my first post) or just about any other encoder that encodes in DVD (MPEG-2) compliant form. As I note in my original post, you are better off encoding it with a good MPEG encoder like TEMPGEnc or one of the others I mentioned.


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## smeegle

I don't want to create a VCD. I have quite a lot photographs that I would to scan into my computer and then save them on CD. What software would you reccomend for that. I've seen some that are quite complicated as far as adding music to the collage but all I want to do is to save the pictures in as good a shape as possible. Any ideas?


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## Mulderator

smeegle said:


> I don't want to create a VCD. I have quite a lot photographs that I would to scan into my computer and then save them on CD. What software would you reccomend for that. I've seen some that are quite complicated as far as adding music to the collage but all I want to do is to save the pictures in as good a shape as possible. Any ideas?


You do not need any specialized software simply to burn files to a CD. All you need is whatever software came with your CD burner. If you do not have any, then virtually any software that burns to a CD burner will work. Most people use Nero and it has a free trial. Ulead also has a free trial so you can try that as well. There are probably some free ones out there as well, but I don't know of any myself.


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## smeegle

I have Music Match and Windows Media Player. Neither of them burns pictures to CD. I've tried it. I'll take a look at Nero and Ulead to see if I can work with them. Thanks.


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## Mulderator

smeegle said:


> I have Music Match and Windows Media Player. Neither of them burns pictures to CD. I've tried it. I'll take a look at Nero and Ulead to see if I can work with them. Thanks.


MusicMatch will burn a data CD, which is what you want to do. Just go to "File, Create CD", then there is a little icon at the top that has a disc and a piece of paper--if you highlight it, it says "Change Disc type to Data". Choose that, then choose "add" and then just select whatever files you want to burn to the CD (that is for version 8--earlier versions may have different command structures)

You should know, however, that all that does is move images from your hard drive to a CD, which is fine, if you want to send that to relatives or whatever. Only problem is they need a computer to see them. If you burn them as a VCD (or DVD), then people who have DVD players can actually see them on their television, which is likely to be much bigger and better then looking at them on their computer monitor.


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## Mulderator

I would suggest downloading the Ulead Disc Creator (it has a free trial) and try making a VCD with your pictures--add some nice background music and create a slide show and watch it. You'll change your mind real quick about how you want to distribute phographs for others to view. You could send both a VCD and a data disc just in case your relatives don't have a DVD player or one that will play VCDs.


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## wayneo73

mulder, this is a good post for burning vcd's & dvd's from home movies. are you as versed in making a slideshow that will play in a dvd player?

i'm trying to create a slideshow that will play in my dvd player. i know it supports that function because i've played other peoples projects in my dvd player (cd-rw).

i've been told conflicting stories of what i'll need... ie a dvd burner. also, i have windows xp installed on my cpu and have been told the movie maker that comes with it and a cd burner will do the trick.

... well, i tried it and got an error msg that read "disk is dirty". so i retried... same deal. this result is better than when i was using roxio6 and the dvd player would say "insert disk" and wasn't recognizing anything!


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## Mulderator

wayneo73 said:


> mulder, this is a good post for burning vcd's & dvd's from home movies. are you as versed in making a slideshow that will play in a dvd player?
> 
> i'm trying to create a slideshow that will play in my dvd player. i know it supports that function because i've played other peoples projects in my dvd player (cd-rw).
> 
> i've been told conflicting stories of what i'll need... ie a dvd burner. also, i have windows xp installed on my cpu and have been told the movie maker that comes with it and a cd burner will do the trick.
> 
> ... well, i tried it and got an error msg that read "disk is dirty". so i retried... same deal. this result is better than when i was using roxio6 and the dvd player would say "insert disk" and wasn't recognizing anything!


All you need is a cd burner to make a slide show that will play on a DVD player. You would burn it as a VCD. Keep in mind some DVD players do not play VCDs. As far as software, Ulead Disc Creator or a host of others will create slide shows. I don't know why you are getting an error, but I would post that in a new thread--probably in the hardware forum.


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## ~Candy~

I made a slide show on a cd burner. The only problem I had was you had to hit the forward button on the dvd player remote to get to the next frame. I'm trying to figure out a way around that 

You might try another brand of CDRs.


----------



## wayneo73

Mulder said:


> All you need is a cd burner to make a slide show that will play on a DVD player. You would burn it as a VCD. Keep in mind some DVD players do not play VCDs. As far as software, Ulead Disc Creator or a host of others will create slide shows. I don't know why you are getting an error, but I would post that in a new thread--probably in the hardware forum.


i'm thinking now it may be because there was more on the cd than the slide show... some folders or files? would that be a problem? 

also, when you say vcd, that's a format not a type of disk. my dvd player will recognize cd-rw's... can i use those?


----------



## Mulderator

wayneo73 said:


> i'm thinking now it may be because there was more on the cd than the slide show... some folders or files? would that be a problem?
> 
> also, when you say vcd, that's a format not a type of disk. my dvd player will recognize cd-rw's... can i use those?


As to question 1, that shouldn't make a difference with a CD-RW because your burner will just prompt you to erase what's on the CD. However, if you are using a CR-R, then that would cause a problem because those are not rewritable. Just use a brand new CD-RW to make sure it works.

As to the 2nd queston, VCD is a format (MPEG-1) whereas DVD is another format (MPEG-2). And yes you can use CD-RWs if your DVD player plays them--that just means it is rewritable. CR-Rs are more universally recognized by DVDs, but if yours works, then it doesn't matter unless you want to give the DVD to someone else who has a player.


----------



## grammadreams

This post is great! Just what I had been hunting for a while ago.
Not sure I understand one thing though (atleast for now-may have more questions once I try it. lol). Was wondering...if 4 min. =1 GB does that mean 4 min. wouldn't fit on a 700 MB CD? or would it compress some when I go to put it on CD? Or am I missing something in what you wrote? I may need to replace my CD/RW anyhow so would want to get what I can get the best use out of without paying an arm and leg.
Thanks


----------



## Mulderator

grammadreams said:


> Was wondering...if 4 min. =1 GB does that mean 4 min. wouldn't fit on a 700 MB CD? or would it compress some when I go to put it on CD? Thanks


The 4 min= 1 GB refers to AVI, which is uncompressed. When you burn a VCD to a CD, it will compress it significantly, so you'll get a lot more than 4 minutes. I forget now how much it is, but I recall about an hour or so of MPEG-1 (VCD format) on 700 MB CD.


----------



## LeeBerlik

I am following all of your suggestions. But now I'm having a heck of a time with Cinema Craft Encoder Basic. My 2-and-a-half-minute AVI movie is over 500,000,000 kB (I think kB is the right unit-- I'm not at my home computer now to verify). It had been my understanding from a forum at videohelp.com that encoding AVI to MPEG-2 is a process that takes several hours and results in a MPEG-2 file approximately twice the size of the AVI file. But when I hit the "Encode" button, Cinema Craft creates a file of much smaller size (around 70,000,000 kB, I think) and does it in a matter of a few minutes. That can't be right, can it? I want to burn a DVD of the best quality image possible, and I'm concerned that I've inadvertently hit some kind of "ultra compression" option placing a value of encoding speed over quality.

Speaking of options, I am overwhelmed by all the technical options in CCEB. I have no idea whether I need "2-pass VBR" or whether I need a separate audio track, for example. Is there any chance you could tell me how to set up the encoding options for my AVI file? The User Guide that came with CCEB is extremely unhelpful for a novice like me. Thanks again!!


----------



## Mulderator

LeeBerlik said:


> I am following all of your suggestions. But now I'm having a heck of a time with Cinema Craft Encoder Basic. My 2-and-a-half-minute AVI movie is over 500,000,000 kB (I think kB is the right unit-- I'm not at my home computer now to verify). It had been my understanding from a forum at videohelp.com that encoding AVI to MPEG-2 is a process that takes several hours and results in a MPEG-2 file approximately twice the size of the AVI file. But when I hit the "Encode" button, Cinema Craft creates a file of much smaller size (around 70,000,000 kB, I think) and does it in a matter of a few minutes. That can't be right, can it? I want to burn a DVD of the best quality image possible, and I'm concerned that I've inadvertently hit some kind of "ultra compression" option placing a value of encoding speed over quality.
> 
> Speaking of options, I am overwhelmed by all the technical options in CCEB. I have no idea whether I need "2-pass VBR" or whether I need a separate audio track, for example. Is there any chance you could tell me how to set up the encoding options for my AVI file? The User Guide that came with CCEB is extremely unhelpful for a novice like me. Thanks again!!


Well, 1,000,000,000 bytes is equal to 1,000,000 kilobytes, which is equal to 1,000 megabytes, which is equal to 1 gigabyte. 500,000,000 kb can't be right because that would equal 500 Gigabytes  It's probably 500,000,000 bytes, which is 500 Megs or half a gigabyte.

As to the compression, that sounds right. CCEB is going to encode a 500 Meg file pretty quickly (probably in about 3 or 4 mintues). A much smaller file is created when you take uncompressed AVI or DV AVI (which is compressed to about 1/4th the size of uncompressed AVI) and encode it to MPEG-2. That's the whole point of the encoders, otherwise they'd never fit two hour movies on a DVD, even using both sides.

And as to all the encoding options, you could spend hours and hours figuring that all out. I always just stick with the defaults and have had very good high quality results. As I said in the firs post, CCEB does not have near as easy a user interface as TMPGenc, which is why I would recommend that to a new person just starting out.

Have you purchased CCEB? If not, try TMPGenc. The 3.0 Express actually has a wizard that guides you through the process and I would just stick with the defaults on that.


----------



## Mulderator

Here are screen shots of TMPGenc 3.0 Express as you go through the Wizard:




























Just choose the output (i.e., DVD, VCD) and accept all the defaults. You've got lots and lots of learning to do to tweek all those different choices for encoding. I would say don't worry about it if you are getting good high quality videos using the defaults.


----------



## LeeBerlik

Fantastic advice. Much more helpful than what I received from Cinema Craft technical support. THANK YOU!


----------



## Mulderator

bookime, I split your post out as a separate thread and put it in hardware as it is actually a hardware problem:

http://forums.techguy.org/t259799.html


----------



## YungMike

i would like to know is it possible to use only nero to make a vcd file i have 2 files .avi of the same movie 1of2 and 2of2 i cant put them together on a cd cause its to big 
i really dont comprehend all those other programs if u know a tutrioral link where i can learn step by step is it possible that i have to get a dvd instead of regular cd's in order for it to work


----------



## Sheza20

I have been trying to burn a good clear DVD from my camcorder using Intervideo WinDVD Creator 2, the program is easy enough to use, but the DVD video is not clear like when you copy it to VHS ( which I did to make sure it wasn't the camcorder) The DVD plays OK and sounds OK but the picture is very grainy and all movement when panning a room or something seems 10x's faster. We live in Florida and just went threw Hurricane Charley. Well we video'd everything before the hurricane for insurance and then after with all the damage and I just cant get a descent copy to DVD. We video'd during the whole storm and really want to have all of it on DVD to send to Friends and Family in the northern states being they have never seen anything like this, so any help would be greatly appreciated.


----------



## Mulderator

Sheza20 said:


> I have been trying to burn a good clear DVD from my camcorder using Intervideo WinDVD Creator 2, the program is easy enough to use, but the DVD video is not clear like when you copy it to VHS ( which I did to make sure it wasn't the camcorder) The DVD plays OK and sounds OK but the picture is very grainy and all movement when panning a room or something seems 10x's faster. We live in Florida and just went threw Hurricane Charley. Well we video'd everything before the hurricane for insurance and then after with all the damage and I just cant get a descent copy to DVD. We video'd during the whole storm and really want to have all of it on DVD to send to Friends and Family in the northern states being they have never seen anything like this, so any help would be greatly appreciated.


That's probably because of the MPEG encoder you are using. Go back and read the first post in this thread and use one of the MPEG encoders I suggested to encode the DVD, then burn it and see if you get the same problem.


----------



## statetrav

You can use Nero to create VCDs and it works very easily.
There are many programs out there that will create VCds. With Nero, you click on the burning portion, mark it to create VCD, click and drag the mgp files to the far left side of the screen, add all you want to.........you can go in and change how long a gap between files.....when you are ready, drop a CD in and hit burn. It will create a disc that plays automatically thru when inserted into the DVD player (if able to read VCD format, you have to look and read closely as not all players can do that). Will play the first file and move to the next. You can use your dvd player to jump ahead and behind in playing as well. I liked this version before getting my DVD writer.


----------



## vietknight

I am pretty stupid to have to post this, but I do use the computer often. WHAT is the big difference between a DVD disk and a Cd-R? I aw that Mulder posted something about using DVD drives to brun them, but I guess you are referring to burning DVD-R's. I was wondering, if I use a normal CD-R and burn mpegs and mpgs onto it using Nero, to make Vcds.

My second question is how much like on average can you put in a VCD cd... I hope that's not too confusing, well what I'm trying to say is how many minutes are allowed. Would it be the same for like say if you were to use a 80min CD-R, that means you have 80mins of Video footage able to record on it. (like dose it work like it does when you burn music) BTW, Mulder, is a genius. If this question is somehow a repeat , I am very sorry to have posted it. (keeping in mind, this is my 12th year, damn hw! hehe)

Thx ya'll

Cheers,
VK


----------



## esther

l have another problem: l burned my movie from my camcorder directly on a dvd using a dvd recorder. ls there a programme that will let me edit the movies from the dvd?? lt plays very well on my pc.


----------



## wolfworx

As I noted on my post elsewhere on this Forum. Home burned DVDs may not play on all equipment expecially if a disk label is used. I recently burned a DVD of old home movies for a friend. He just replied via email that the menu on the DVD works, the sound works, but the movie clips won't play (although it played without problem on my CyberHome DVD player). Yes, I had put a label on the DVD I sent him.

Moral of the story: Don't label DVDs.


----------



## Mulder_Lite

esther said:


> l have another problem: l burned my movie from my camcorder directly on a dvd using a dvd recorder. ls there a programme that will let me edit the movies from the dvd?? lt plays very well on my pc.


Yes, TMPGenc will let you do that as well as Ulead (see links in my first post). But with TMPGenc you will need to get the add on for the sound because when you record directly to DVD from a DVD recorder, it records a separate track.


----------



## Mulder_Lite

wolfworx said:


> As I noted on my post elsewhere on this Forum. Home burned DVDs may not play on all equipment expecially if a disk label is used. I recently burned a DVD of old home movies for a friend. He just replied via email that the menu on the DVD works, the sound works, but the movie clips won't play (although it played without problem on my CyberHome DVD player). Yes, I had put a label on the DVD I sent him.
> 
> Moral of the story: Don't label DVDs.


I'm not sure what you mean by "don't label DVDs"? Do you mean affixing a lable to the top of the DVD? If so, that doesn't make any difference. Of course, if you put the label on the bottom of the DVD it would!


----------



## Mulder_Lite

vietknight said:


> I am pretty stupid to have to post this, but I do use the computer often. WHAT is the big difference between a DVD disk and a Cd-R? I aw that Mulder posted something about using DVD drives to brun them, but I guess you are referring to burning DVD-R's. I was wondering, if I use a normal CD-R and burn mpegs and mpgs onto it using Nero, to make Vcds.


A DVD allows recording in DVD format (MPEG-2) at better quality. It is also much bigger at 4.7 Gigs (single sided) than 700 to 800 Megs for a CD-R. As I said before, DVD burners are so cheap now I wouldn't even screw around with putting video on CD-R. The quality is noticeably better on DVD and you can store more.



vietknight said:


> My second question is how much like on average can you put in a VCD cd... I hope that's not too confusing, well what I'm trying to say is how many minutes are allowed. Would it be the same for like say if you were to use a 80min CD-R, that means you have 80mins of Video footage able to record on it. (like dose it work like it does when you burn music) BTW, Mulder, is a genius. If this question is somehow a repeat , I am very sorry to have posted it. (keeping in mind, this is my 12th year, damn hw! hehe)
> 
> Thx ya'll


The minutes of video footage depend on the MPEG encoding. The 80 minutes refers to audio not video, although most standard encoding for VCD tries to replicate the one minute of video for one minute of audio space on a VCD so you can get about 80 minutes. But as I said, VCD quality is not good IMO and I would not waste my time making VCD video.


----------



## wolfworx

To clarify. 

I burn two DVDs from the same material so they are Identical. 

On one I put a label (on the CORRECT side, of course) the other one I leave with no label. 

I created serveral test pairs in this manner using different material (movies). 

I play the DVDs on three other DVD players (the ones that have had a problem with my "home burned" DVDs)

The DVDs without labels work fine. Those with labels either hang or otherwise fail.

My conclusion: Labels appear to be a problem on some players, possibly because of the extra weight. Don't use them. Label with a permanent marker instead. 

I suggest some of you others who have had problems with the DVDs you burn hanging during playback, see if a label is to blame.

BTW my CyberHome DVD player seems to be immune to this problem, is inexpensive and plays MPG movies as well as DVD, JPG and MP3. :up:


----------



## statetrav

I have read on here regarding the problems with labels on DVDs, so haven't used them, only on my CDs. The question I have.......has anyone used the machine which presses "labels" onto the disc directly? Do They cause a problem? I have seen them at Staples and wondered if they were worth the investment. I have several disc to make and was wondering if they caused the same problems as the paper labels. Thanks.


----------



## awalter

My vhs-c camcorder only has audio and video hookups (the white & yellow wires.) I also have the vcr adapter tape.
My VCR has an s video out as well as a&v.
My computer has a tv out (s video type)
They are both outs.
Can you explain to me how to hook this particular mess up, or isnt it possible?


----------



## vietknight

Mulder_Lite said:


> The minutes of video footage depend on the MPEG encoding. The 80 minutes refers to audio not video, although most standard encoding for VCD tries to replicate the one minute of video for one minute of audio space on a VCD so you can get about 80 minutes. But as I said, VCD quality is not good IMO and I would not waste my time making VCD video.


I'm not sure I fully understand, but if your not going to waste time making a vcd. How would I make a cd with video on it. U've seem to mention mpeg, and that its much better quality. I'll try to keep that in mind, and ty it out.

And you guys with the labels, what's with labels!! they're waste of paper, and they cause problems! don't use them, even though it may look attractive to have such artistic design on them. Personally, I don't see how the labels can do anything to the performance of the dvd, but i guess it depends on how thick it is etc.. Hope that helps


----------



## cgm707

Hi, I was wondering how the process would work if I want to copy a VHS tape I have onto a DVD, using my computer. Would I have to buy the same hardware you mentioned....I had thought there might be a cable I could buy to attach my VCR to my computer, and then copy it using my computer's DVD player....
Thanks.


----------



## babis

Hi all

I read all the thread and as almost all first time posters I have questions to post (instead of answers)

I didnt find anything regarding the codecs. I already own Ulead video studio 8, which comes with real player and QuickTime player. I definitely dont want these two to be installed on my new PC, so my question is: can the Ulead video studio 8 function normally without these 2 applications and instead to install Download K-Lite Codec or codec pack all in 1. Further are these two codecs covering real player and QuickTime or do I have to download QuickTime Alternative and Real Alternative.

Last but not least, I am trialing MpegEncoder 1.4.1 and I would appreciate your comments regarding MainConcepts DVCPro 25/50 DV Codec and MainConcepts Motion JPEG Codec v3.2.4. If I install all above codecs, would my PC slow-down, because it is very new and I noted almost all codecs are installed in C:\WINDOWS\system directory.

Thanks for reading all my thoughts

Brgds


----------



## wolfworx

I use the ADS Tech Video Xpress Capture unit to bring Tape Video to computer. It sells for under $100 and includes software. One end of the device connects to the tape players RCA jacks (Video and Audio) the other end connects to the computer via USB.

This method allows you to capture your tape video as an MPG file which can be converted to DVD format with ULead Video Studio or similar software.

Recently, I brought some old 8mm movies over to VHS and converted them to DVD in this manner. The toughest problem of this project was finding a good 8mm projector!


----------



## XbrvhrtX

The new nero 6.6 will allow you to burn DVD straight from an AVI file now  no need to convert with other progs, nero will do all the hard work  takes a bit of time but no stretching or any quality loss that i can see


----------



## G00k

I needed to get an analog video turned into digital format so it could be edited and burned onto a video cd for a short presentation.. I took the camera & tape to a production house and had it transferred since I don't yet have a capture card.

I got back a nice dvd-r. When I put it in my dvdrom it acts like it's a winamp audio file. (and does nothing). Putting it into my TV's dvd player, it plays fine.

Did I do this bass ackwards? Can the dvd-r data be brought back into my PC for editing? (my pc is w98se, my dvdrom is liteon ltd163)

Thanks,

G00k


----------



## vietknight

I think it acts as a winamp audio file because you specified those files to be played like that in your folder options. Maybe you should check there first to see if those settings are correct. Then I would recommend you trying other programs to to view such as divx or something. BTW, what file-type is it when its on ur dvd-r?


----------



## G00k

Oh great Mulder!

I've been reading through this forum, and I have a suggestion that might make sense: 

If you could create a thread (or several) and stick them at the top of the forum like your guide, so that the following could be compared by the various users on the forum: 

Video Capture Hardware (internal/external; pci/agp; USB/Firewire)
Video Editing Software (what works with which OS, including Linux; How easy/hard are they to use; How their features compare; How buggy they are)
DVD (& CD) burning software (same as editing concerns above)

My reasoning is that on my first visits to the site (including the whole site for various support questions), I spent a lot of timelooking at previous posts to try NOT to ask the same lame newbie question that has probably been answered perfectly in one of the many screens of posts and replies. Since there are many areas of expertise converging here, grouping into coherent chunks might aid many and reduce duplication.

These three categories are what I'm trying to research right now, but there are probably many many categories fellow forum seekers could suggest that would be narrow enough to facilitate searches, but broad enough to encompass most general questions.

Whadya think?

Your humble supplicant,

G00k


----------



## Zuki

I read this posts and went to the sony url that you posted and they are bragging on the replacement for Sony screen blast which is Vegas Movie Studio 4.0. Do you have any info and recommendations on this software. They also offer a trial version of this software. I have downloaded it but will have to wait until my camcorder gets back from the shop to be able to try it. 

Hope someone knows something about it.

Thanks Bill


----------



## bbvenkatesh

Hi Mulder,
In my country DVD burners are not that popular and we still use CD Burners and hence would like to know how to convert .avi files to .dat format.
Also VCD says .mpg file. If I burn this onto a CD, will this run on my VCD player? Because I have Nero CD Burner which creates VCD with a .DAT file. But will that work with .MPG file?

Regards
Venkat


----------



## smeegle

If there a type of software that can encode scanned pictures into jpeg format?


----------



## joleee2004

I have read your narrative on Burning DVD's from Home movies.

I have recently purchased a new computer by emachines.

I have been trying to burn my home movies from my digital
camcorder/still camera that I recently purchased too.

I have received one error message after another.

My computer came with microsoft movie maker installed,
and nero installed. Plus I downloaded nero visions express3.
someone told me that it converts Mpeg4 files which is the
format that my digital camera is because I called the manufacturer.

I had already bought and installed ULead DVD
MovieFactory before I read your narrative.

My camera came with the firewire that you mentioned.

My computer also has the sd/memory card media readers on it.

But I can't get the movies to capture from my camera to my
computer using the firewire.

I have the movies on my hard drive in a file under "My Video's".
I retrieved them from the media reader just to view using
the microsoft movie maker and the microsoft media player.

I tried to burn those using nero and I get  "no compatible file
found." Which from reading your narrative means that it needs
to be encoded"


I tried to retrieve the home movies directly from my digital
camcorder using the firewires, and I get an error message "no drivers
installed"

Then I tried to retrieve the home movies from the media reader
using the sd/memory card to go directly into the "movie making
software either nero and Ulead MovieFactory and I get an
error message "Media not recognized."

I have been looking for technical support, but I keep running into
road blocks. I have a birthday party on the dvd home movie
and I was very excited about having the camera and the computer
and I was going to put the birthday party on DVD and give it to
some of the folks at the party to enjoy.

Can you help me on what these error messages mean and give me
some advice on where I can go to get someone to walk me through
this.


----------



## wolfworx

Smeegle,
You did not mention the format of the scanned images. Have they been scanned in some nonstandard format? If the format is bmp, tif, gif etc. it can be converted to jpg by many populsr graphic programs. I use Jasc Pain Shop Pro.


----------



## smeegle

Sorry about that Wolfworx. The format is .bmp. I looked up Jasc Pain Shop Pro on google and they didn't give much detail about jpeg conversion. I need something for non professionals with the simplest instruction possible.


----------



## wolfworx

You can use the new version of FreshView to convert bmp to jpg. It's free!
http://www.freshdevices.com


----------



## smeegle

Thanks, Wolfworx. I appreciate your help.


----------



## Mulderator

joleee2004 said:


> I have read your narrative on Burning DVD's from Home movies.
> 
> I have recently purchased a new computer by emachines.
> 
> I have been trying to burn my home movies from my digital
> camcorder/still camera that I recently purchased too.
> 
> I have received one error message after another.
> 
> My computer came with microsoft movie maker installed,
> and nero installed. Plus I downloaded nero visions express3.
> someone told me that it converts Mpeg4 files which is the
> format that my digital camera is because I called the manufacturer.
> 
> I had already bought and installed ULead DVD
> MovieFactory before I read your narrative.
> 
> My camera came with the firewire that you mentioned.
> 
> My computer also has the sd/memory card media readers on it.
> 
> But I can't get the movies to capture from my camera to my
> computer using the firewire.
> 
> I have the movies on my hard drive in a file under "My Video's".
> I retrieved them from the media reader just to view using
> the microsoft movie maker and the microsoft media player.
> 
> I tried to burn those using nero and I get "no compatible file
> found." Which from reading your narrative means that it needs
> to be encoded"
> 
> I tried to retrieve the home movies directly from my digital
> camcorder using the firewires, and I get an error message "no drivers
> installed"
> 
> Then I tried to retrieve the home movies from the media reader
> using the sd/memory card to go directly into the "movie making
> software either nero and Ulead MovieFactory and I get an
> error message "Media not recognized."
> 
> I have been looking for technical support, but I keep running into
> road blocks. I have a birthday party on the dvd home movie
> and I was very excited about having the camera and the computer
> and I was going to put the birthday party on DVD and give it to
> some of the folks at the party to enjoy.
> 
> Can you help me on what these error messages mean and give me
> some advice on where I can go to get someone to walk me through
> this.


Sorry, but haven't been bag to this thread in awhile. There is a lot of information in there with a number of different errors. You need to sort those out one at a time. First thing is to get the movies captured. But this is not the thread to sort out hardware issues. Go to the Hardware section and start a new thread on your video capture problem. Tell them what type of Camcorder you have and what error you are getting. Also go to Control Panel, System, Hardware, Device Manager and tell them if there are any yellow question marks. Then go to My computer and see if your Camcorder is listed as a peripheral device when it is plugged into the computer and turned on.


----------



## Mulderator

G00k said:


> Oh great Mulder!
> 
> I've been reading through this forum, and I have a suggestion that might make sense:
> 
> If you could create a thread (or several) and stick them at the top of the forum like your guide, so that the following could be compared by the various users on the forum:
> 
> Video Capture Hardware (internal/external; pci/agp; USB/Firewire)
> Video Editing Software (what works with which OS, including Linux; How easy/hard are they to use; How their features compare; How buggy they are)
> DVD (& CD) burning software (same as editing concerns above)
> 
> My reasoning is that on my first visits to the site (including the whole site for various support questions), I spent a lot of timelooking at previous posts to try NOT to ask the same lame newbie question that has probably been answered perfectly in one of the many screens of posts and replies. Since there are many areas of expertise converging here, grouping into coherent chunks might aid many and reduce duplication.
> 
> These three categories are what I'm trying to research right now, but there are probably many many categories fellow forum seekers could suggest that would be narrow enough to facilitate searches, but broad enough to encompass most general questions.
> 
> Whadya think?
> 
> Your humble supplicant,
> 
> G00k


Well, the problem with that is everyone has issues they are trying to research and if we stuff everyone's different issues, we'd have a lot of stuck posts. Feel free to post a new thread if you want and then just keep replying to it to keep it current.


----------



## LBU2NA

I was wondering whats the best and easiest program to use to download games, movies, and programs?Also if my pc is at 1300MHZ should i clock up to 2600MHZ? Does the quality increase drastically from mpeg to dvd when displayed on a tv???

thank you


----------



## Rusty1952

Hi. I don't really know bout the downloads, but i can tell u that u'd be hard pressed to o'clock ur system from 1.3 to 2.6Hhz. Even if u could o'clock to that extreme u would surely fry a few things. So the answer is no to that and we would need to know more info. bout ur system to advise u on what ur choices would be for o'clocking.
If u are comparing the mpeg1 std to dvd then the quality difference is very significant when displayed on a tv. Not so much of a difference between mpeg2 and dvd.

Hope this helped.


----------



## serg873

If someone need to transfer old movies in to a dvd format and you like TIVO the easy and faster way to do it is with the HUMAX DRT800 I love it!!! It only take about 1 1/2 hrs avg.. from star to finish..You don't need any software or special tools, do it!! I got it for Xmas and I already burn 24 DVD'S...I have 4 computers and a lot of software and I try before to do it this way and it is too complicated, If you buy this product you will never regret it. the price of this unit is $399.00 after rebate but it is worth it.


Let me know if you have any questions. [email protected]
Serg


----------



## LBU2NA

naw dogg 400 thats a rip off, the average mpeg to dvd converter program cost only 54 to 60 MAX. Why would i pay 400??? just buy a converting program and give back ur hardware.


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## serg873

The time for some people is more important that the money.......how long would it takes to burn one tape in to a DVD format thou the PC? how much hard drive space do you need in your PC? how much experience do you need to be able to do in in the PC?

I'm sorry! but I have over 150 8mm tapes that I need to transfer in to a DVD and buying this product let me do it and no time.. I can be burning the movie while I'm watching a show...I can share this videos with the rest of my family and a different rooms.

I probably forgot to mention that this is a combo gift TIVO/DVD Burner/shows/home videos/8mm/VCR


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## LBU2NA

no you dont understand, i want to convert an mpeg or avi file to dvd not 8mm tapes.


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## glo

Serg -
Do you know an internet site that gives the specifics of exactly what TIVO product you have? I'm REALLY interested in something that would allow me to capture my old 8mm film tapes on CD or DVD. My problem is that my tapes were taken with a REALLY old movie camera -- not digital. I have the projector, but of course it isn't digital either and no way to hook it up to computer or VCR. 
Far as I can tell, I have to either borrow or rent a camcorder that is compatible with VCR, use the projector to show the films and tape off the screen -- loss of quality, I know -- or send the films to one of the companies that transfers them to CD or DVD for a pretty hefty price. I hate to send them in, in case they get lost.
Your product sounds pretty interesting anyway for other uses.


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## wolfworx

One of the most frustrating thing about burning DVD's is my discovery that the chance of it playing on other DVD players is dicey at best.

I recently copied my old 8mm movies to VHS tapes, brought them into my computer as mpegs, added titles and music, then burnig as a DVD.

The resulting DVD worked fine on my computer DVD drive and my $35 Cyber Home DVD player and the DVD player of a friend in Ohio.

Unfortunately it got the "hicups" (stalled or pixcellated heavily) on the equipment of three other friend of mine. Yes, these disks still worked properly on my equipment. 

I am eager to hear from others with regard to this problem.


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## Mulderator

wolfworx said:


> One of the most frustrating thing about burning DVD's is my discovery that the chance of it playing on other DVD players is dicey at best.
> 
> I recently copied my old 8mm movies to VHS tapes, brought them into my computer as mpegs, added titles and music, then burnig as a DVD.
> 
> The resulting DVD worked fine on my computer DVD drive and my $35 Cyber Home DVD player and the DVD player of a friend in Ohio.
> 
> Unfortunately it got the "hicups" (stalled or pixcellated heavily) on the equipment of three other friend of mine. Yes, these disks still worked properly on my equipment.
> 
> I am eager to hear from others with regard to this problem.


There are a number of issues that cause that. First, the software you are using to do the Mpeg encoding may not be good quality. Second, the DVD burner you are using may not be good quality. 3rd, the DVD disc you are using may not be good quality. 4th, the player your friend is using may be a piece of crap. But there is no doubt burning home DVDs has not yet reached the production quality of store bought DVDs. But don't forget these people are using MPEG encoders that costs $10,000 or more. You can't expect to have a perfect DVD burned using $59 Mpeg encoding software and $99 DVD burners. If you used expensive DVD authoring progams, you wouldn't have those problems. Do you have an extra $20,000 lying around to invest? 

The good news is as the technology progresses, so will the quality. That's why I recommended using separate DVD encoding softwar (in the beginning of this thread) because the ones I recommended tended to do a very good job at the encoding, but we are still talking about a relatively cheap method. I burn DVDs that run fine and then I'll burn one and the damn thing freezes and pixillates and I can't figure out why it did it in that instance and not the other three I burned (and I'm talking about the exact same process with the exact same files and hardware).


----------



## Mulderator

serg873 said:


> If someone need to transfer old movies in to a dvd format and you like TIVO the easy and faster way to do it is with the HUMAX DRT800 I love it!!! It only take about 1 1/2 hrs avg.. from star to finish..You don't need any software or special tools, do it!! I got it for Xmas and I already burn 24 DVD'S...I have 4 computers and a lot of software and I try before to do it this way and it is too complicated, If you buy this product you will never regret it. the price of this unit is $399.00 after rebate but it is worth it.
> 
> Let me know if you have any questions. [email protected]
> Serg


That's a good unit--the Humax DRT800. However, you don't need that to do what you are talking about and it also requires you purchase TIVO to get that $399 price otherwise its $499. Also, you have to hook up a VCR to it. You can actually do it simpler by buying a DVD recorder/VCR combo. You just stick the tape in the VCR and disc in the DVD and hit "record"--the unit is self contained. There are some very reasonably priced ones. The one I like the best is by GoVideo:

http://www.nextag.com/serv/main/buy...&ptitle=61235211&core=&kw=Go_Video_VR4940_DVD

because it has Progressive Scan output for the VCR--i.e., you hook up only one set of component cables to your TV and it upscales the VCR signal to component output.


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## GhettoBuddhist

What if the wmv is licensed, then how do you burn it?


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## Mulderator

GhettoBuddhist said:


> What if the wmv is licensed, then how do you burn it?


Can you be more specific?


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## daynascreate

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!1
THIS IS JUST THE WEBSITE THAT I NEEDED. THANKS A LOT!!!!!!!!1
---daynascreate


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## stryker23

OK i'm new to all of this, but a friend wants me to convert there home videos to DVD's. They have some old movies on regular VHS tapes, so i would need something to copy them. To my knowledge the video card I have (Gigabyte Radeon 9600) is not capable of capturing video. I know there are a lot of different video capture devices that range in price. What would u suggest for me to purchase that would allow me to transfer VHS tapes to DVD? I have a maddogz DVD burner and it came with Nero 6. Does that have all i need to copy them? If it does how will it put them on the disc? Will they just start playing or will they at least split them into scenes you can choose from? The reason they asked me to do this is because they purchased a Camcorder that records them automatically to disc and allows them to choose scenes and they want to see the rest of their videos like that too. So please recommend what i should buy to capture the video and software. Also are there any decent freeware programs. Like when i burn DVD to DVD i use dvd decryptor and dvd shrink both freeware. Something that is decent quality and at a reasonable price that is pretty user friendly is what I'm looking for because they agreed to pay for everything i would need to use and then allow me to keep it for my own use.


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## daynascreate

I started off with what is called DVD Express. It cost me $77.00, and it came with the ADS Tech Box, which you can plug up RCA cables to the back of. It works great!!! I have done many videos with the box, including videos from my VCR. It came with these softwares-Ulead DVD Moviefactory 2 (which is great, and alows you to make menu screens.) And also with Ulead Video Studio 7SE,(which is also very neat, because you can add 3D effects with it.) That is a great value for the price. You may can find it cheaper on the internet. I bought mine at Wal-Mart in December. All you do is hook it up to your USB port, and install and you're ready to go. I have also bought Pinnacle Studio AV/DV, which is a capture card for the PCI slot, but you have to have a Sound Card with A line In available for your sound. That comes with Pinnacle Studio 9, which is a great software also. These are just some suggestions.


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## stryker23

daynascreate said:


> I started off with what is called DVD Express. It cost me $77.00, and it came with the ADS Tech Box, which you can plug up RCA cables to the back of. It works great!!! I have done many videos with the box, including videos from my VCR. It came with these softwares-Ulead DVD Moviefactory 2 (which is great, and alows you to make menu screens.) And also with Ulead Video Studio 7SE,(which is also very neat, because you can add 3D effects with it.) That is a great value for the price. You may can find it cheaper on the internet. I bought mine at Wal-Mart in December. All you do is hook it up to your USB port, and install and you're ready to go. I have also bought Pinnacle Studio AV/DV, which is a capture card for the PCI slot, but you have to have a Sound Card with A line In available for your sound. That comes with Pinnacle Studio 9, which is a great software also. These are just some suggestions.


Is this the one you purchased http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=580965&Sku=A03-7042 
With this can you also just copy shows directly off the TV?


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## daynascreate

Yes, that is the one I purchased. But I payed about $20.00 more for mine. That's a good deal. I guess it should still come with the softwares that mine came with, and yes, I think you can capture from T.V., but I have'nt tried it, because I have Satelite, and I don't know exactly how to connect it, or if I would have to have that T.V. software that you put in a PCI slot. Not all the way sure. I just do videos and picture slideshows. Just getting ready to start my own business. Love It!!!!! Hope this helps.


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## stryker23

I think i'll try it out.
Thanks for the help!


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## Mulderator

The easiest way to transfer is to buy a DVD recorder that has a built in VCR. One touch recording and you're done.


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## stryker23

Yes, i know but don't those cost around $300 for most?


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## Mulderator

daynascreate said:


> I started off with what is called DVD Express. It cost me $77.00, and it came with the ADS Tech Box, which you can plug up RCA cables to the back of. It works great!!! I have done many videos with the box, including videos from my VCR. It came with these softwares-Ulead DVD Moviefactory 2 (which is great, and alows you to make menu screens.) And also with Ulead Video Studio 7SE,(which is also very neat, because you can add 3D effects with it.) That is a great value for the price. You may can find it cheaper on the internet. I bought mine at Wal-Mart in December. All you do is hook it up to your USB port, and install and you're ready to go. I have also bought Pinnacle Studio AV/DV, which is a capture card for the PCI slot, but you have to have a Sound Card with A line In available for your sound. That comes with Pinnacle Studio 9, which is a great software also. These are just some suggestions.


I purchased the ADS Instant DVD + DV which has the capability to capture from DV as well, so you can capture from a VCR or your digital camcorder via firewire. I used it to capture all my home movies to MPEG-2 on my puter. Very good product--I would highly recommend it.

http://www.adstech.com/products/intro/products.asp


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## Michelli

Is there anyway to make a movie shorter? I wanted to let my friend borrow a movie I got on DVD, but he doesn't have a dvd player or DVD rom in his house, so I need to put it on a VCD so he can watch it, but the movie is 707 MB, I need to drop a couple of MB so it will fit on a 700mb CDR. Any ideas?

Also, I thought because it is an .avi now, do I need to have it encoded to an MPEG-1 before I can burn it as a VCD and have it work in a DVD player, just in case? Thanks in advance


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## Mulderator

I wanted to update this thread because there is finally a product that does a good job encoding to MPEG--an external hardware encoder so this is *the product/method I would recommend*:

http://www.adstech.com/products/USBAV702/intro/usb702intro.asp?pid=USBAV702

With the above, you can encode MPEG in real time directly from a VCR or camcorder to the hard drive. With that, you *eliminate Step 2 in my guide* (encoding to MPEG):

If you have a digital camcorder, this is the same product with a firewire port:

http://www.adstech.com/products/USBAV_703/intro/usb703intro.asp?pid=USBAV703


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## Mulderator

Michelli said:


> Is there anyway to make a movie shorter? I wanted to let my friend borrow a movie I got on DVD, but he doesn't have a dvd player or DVD rom in his house, so I need to put it on a VCD so he can watch it, but the movie is 707 MB, I need to drop a couple of MB so it will fit on a 700mb CDR. Any ideas?
> 
> Also, I thought because it is an .avi now, do I need to have it encoded to an MPEG-1 before I can burn it as a VCD and have it work in a DVD player, just in case? Thanks in advance


You can split a portion of the movie out with this:

http://www.honestech-e.com/us/product24.asp


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## Michelli

thanks mulder.


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## yandupalli

how to post new thread.
i have a valid account on this site.
plz help


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## sldwaa

I have experimented with different software and hardware to burn from my mini-dv camcorder disc to to various formats. As I have lived in both the US and Asia, I have experimented with VCD, DVD, PAL, NTSC, etc... In my humble opinion, I have always found the conversion process to be the limiting factor for clarity. Hardware conversion is typically better than software, but sometimes you have no choice. Now that I am back in the states, I have experimented with the Sony DV Direct (VRD-VC10) DVD burner and find it has extremely good clarity in converting from mini DV tape to DVD. You can direct burn from the camcorder to the DVD burner while bypassing the PC. The disadvantages of this burner is that is only connects via S-Video or AV cables form the camcorder to the burner (no digital), and that to direct burn, it only uses DVD+R, and not DVD-R (I have not found this to be an issue as of yet on any DVD player I tested the results on). Also, if you direct burn, you lose out on some of the editing features you would have using the software configurations recommended in this thread, and you cannot preview the results unless you use RW. So, my question is, for the $230 price of this burner, should I keep this burner to convert my mini DVs to DVD, or should I go back to the "3 piece" strategy recommended at the start of this thread to allow for maximim flexibility? I am also curious if the recommendations in the into thread will ultimately have the same clarity of this "direct burn". Many thanks to any consideration given to my questions...


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## Mulderator

sldwaa said:


> I have experimented with different software and hardware to burn from my mini-dv camcorder disc to to various formats. As I have lived in both the US and Asia, I have experimented with VCD, DVD, PAL, NTSC, etc... In my humble opinion, I have always found the conversion process to be the limiting factor for clarity. Hardware conversion is typically better than software, but sometimes you have no choice. Now that I am back in the states, I have experimented with the Sony DV Direct (VRD-VC10) DVD burner and find it has extremely good clarity in converting from mini DV tape to DVD. You can direct burn from the camcorder to the DVD burner while bypassing the PC. The disadvantages of this burner is that is only connects via S-Video or AV cables form the camcorder to the burner (no digital), and that to direct burn, it only uses DVD+R, and not DVD-R (I have not found this to be an issue as of yet on any DVD player I tested the results on). Also, if you direct burn, you lose out on some of the editing features you would have using the software configurations recommended in this thread, and you cannot preview the results unless you use RW. So, my question is, for the $230 price of this burner, should I keep this burner to convert my mini DVs to DVD, or should I go back to the "3 piece" strategy recommended at the start of this thread to allow for maximim flexibility? I am also curious if the recommendations in the into thread will ultimately have the same clarity of this "direct burn". Many thanks to any consideration given to my questions...


Actually, until recently, I could not find a hardware encoder that did as good a job software encoders. You could get good ones, but they are very expensive--anything inexpensive did not work as well. But MPEG encoding has come a long way.

I personally don't like the idea of burning home movies to DVD. I would recommend using this external hardware encoder:

http://www.adstech.com/products/USBAV702/intro/usb702intro.asp?pid=USBAV702

I used it to encode all of my home movies to MPEG on one 200 Gig hard drive. The qaulity of older analog recordings is not as good as todays digital, so you can record it all at the lowest quality setting and get about 100 hours of video stored on a 200 Gig hard drive with virtually no loss in quality. For higher quality digital recordings, you can use a better quality or a best quality setting, but the files get bigger of course. Then just play the videos directly on your television using a media DVD player with network connection (they'll be lots them coming out).

Why burn to DVD? You have to catalog everything and DVDs are a much less reliable storage media. I just pop up a menu on my television and select whatever home movie I want to watch--all of them are right there at a touch of a remote. Burn all your old movies to a hard drive, buy another one and back them all up and store it at work or a relatives house so in case of fire, you won't lose all your movies.

I was very pleased with how this worked. I'd just pop an VHS-C tape into the a VCR and record it directly to the hard drive with real time MPEG encoding all in one step. Before doing that, I was all set to record all of those onto DVD and I am so glad I didn't. In fact, I bought 50 DVDs bulk for that purpose and have them sitting in my closet collecting dust!  I'll use them all eventually I guess!


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## Mulderator

I'll tell you what else I don't like about burning DVDs--there are more variables, which means more potential problems. You have the issue of the DVD burning software, the DVD burner and the DVD media. DVDs quality varies among brands and even within brands and DVD burners can be good and bad and of course you can have problems with the software used to burn the DVDs. There is a lot more consistency with a hard drive in terms of writing files then writing to a DVD. It is not unusual for me to have problems with the DVD playing correctly. When I burned all my old movies to hard drive, I did not have one glitch. Try that burning 50 DVDs! 

The other nice thing is you can use all your old movies to make video productions--burn that onto a DVD to send to Grandma--she'll love it!


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## Speedracer1

I have been using Ulead's MovieFactory 2 SE for about a year to convert my analog Hi8 tapes to DVD and had no problems. I use LeadTek's WinTV2000 TV Capture card. It has been about five months since my last "movie" and when I started to capture my video, it ran for about two or three minutes then posted a notice that it could not create a capture graph (or something similar involving a graph), advised me that the captured file was corrupt and was being deleted. Since that occurred, it will not even begin to capture a single frame and posts that same notice every time. I have experienced a couple of instances in which I got a blue screen with a notice of a device driver conflict and my system crashed. I have not installed anything new onto my system other than the standard Windows XP updates (other than SP2, which I have not installed). When I tried to capture the video in Nero 6.2, the picture captured perfectly, but no audio was capture. I can find no reason for this. Do you have any suggestions for resolving either or both of these problems? I have uninstalled the entire Ulead suite and reinstalled it, but that did not solve the problem either. Also, I have run AdAware and Spybot Search & Destroy to removed all instances of adware, malware, etc. and did not provide any relief. Thanks in advance for any help you may be able to provide.


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## Mulderator

Speedracer1 said:


> I have been using Ulead's MovieFactory 2 SE for about a year to convert my analog Hi8 tapes to DVD and had no problems. I use LeadTek's WinTV2000 TV Capture card. It has been about five months since my last "movie" and when I started to capture my video, it ran for about two or three minutes then posted a notice that it could not create a capture graph (or something similar involving a graph), advised me that the captured file was corrupt and was being deleted. Since that occurred, it will not even begin to capture a single frame and posts that same notice every time. I have experienced a couple of instances in which I got a blue screen with a notice of a device driver conflict and my system crashed. I have not installed anything new onto my system other than the standard Windows XP updates (other than SP2, which I have not installed). When I tried to capture the video in Nero 6.2, the picture captured perfectly, but no audio was capture. I can find no reason for this. Do you have any suggestions for resolving either or both of these problems? I have uninstalled the entire Ulead suite and reinstalled it, but that did not solve the problem either. Also, I have run AdAware and Spybot Search & Destroy to removed all instances of adware, malware, etc. and did not provide any relief. Thanks in advance for any help you may be able to provide.


I would try a repair of Windows. But you should post this in as its own thread--this is really not a good place because it will get less attention here in this thread.


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## wolfworx

Wow! I thought I was the only one having problems with the movies I burned to DVD. Now it seems I'm having less problems than others.

My inxepensive DVD player ($35) has very few problems playng the DVDs and CDs I burn. I have stopped putting labels on my DVDs so my CD Stomper is gathering dust.

Recently a movie that played fine on my DVD player would not play on her unit. Her computer drive could read the DVD so we copied the data to her hard drive and burned another another DVD from her computer. The resulting DVD ran without problems on her DVD player!


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## rubeckf

I'm also a real newbie on this stuff and not sure if my problem is related to this or something else. I posted a separate thread last eve but have gotten no comments. I can copy a DVD on my computer with my plextor DVD/CD copier but then it won't play on my VCR/DVD player recorder on the tv which is a toshiba. I can copy one on that off TV, like a concert or something and it won't copy or play on my computer. They both say they use the same type DVD's and what I used for both is DVD-R DVD's. I also want to copy some of my old movies from VCR to DVD. Is there something special I need to do to get them to play? I haven't tried that yet. Then after they are on DVD I would like to copy some of them on my DVD copier on my computer. I use Roxio Easy CD/DVD creator 6 platinum. Thanks for any help with my problems.


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## twink

Hi guys. Another newbie. 
I have a rather large collection of old vhs tapes dating back to the early 90s that I am interested in trying to figure out how to digitize and consolodate onto DVDs. Aside from some analog problems with capture (all tapes recorded on my sony tv/vcr combo have serious problems with tracking when played on my other vcr--and my other vcr is the only one that has "out" slots for rca cables) I am curious about what the best method for high quality capture would be.

I have number of different programs I can use for this (and am not afraid to purchase another one if it's better) but generally stick to either Windows Movie Maker or Wideo Wave 4. My capture method is USB Video Bus which is an external USB plug with RCA and S Video connector capability. 

So far what I "know" is that I need to get the video captured in .avi format to start with. The issue at hand is that it seems like no matter how large size file I go for when capturing video the end product always ends up rather pixelated and washed out and grainy. 
For the most part, a lot of what I am capturing was recorded from rabbit ears network tv so it isn't the highest quality anyway but I am hoping that the finished product looks at least comparable to the original. Thus leaving me without guilt when I tape over or throw away the original at some point. 

So the question is, to get to the point, is there a trick to capturing from VHS to digital without the unsightly "computer" look?
And then once I do that, I'm gathering I need to get it encoded. But should I just leave it in .avi and then encode it from there? I'm not really well versed in that process yet. 

Thanks for the help.


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## Rusty1952

rubeckf, when u say that u can copy a dvd to ur computer using the Plextor I assume u r meanin that ur ripping the dvd to the hardrive ? If so, are u usin a ripping tool that breaks the encryption such as Dvd Dencryptor or a comprable ripping tool ?


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## rubeckf

I'm using roxio plat. edition.


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## G00k

How much disk space will be needed to move those old 2 hour long VHS home movie tapes to DVD, when considering capture space, edit space, and encode space. (did I miss any other work space?) 

Your guide mentioned 120GB, but extrapolating from my first experience with Studio 8, that would get you maybe an hour of best quality capture, without doing any editting, etc. (Of course it has to be best capture quality - baby's first steps, family memories - what else would I do?) 

Is there a chart somewhere, or a rule of thumb about planning disk storage needs? Your help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

G00k

PS: I see in your latest replies that you think burning dvd's is so problematic that you're dumping to 2 hard drives and and leaving it at that. Wow, and I thought dvd's would be a good permanent answer...


----------



## cattch08

thanks for the help really fance the instant dvd 2.0 but im in england will they be available here. if not im coming to florida in august would i get one at wallmart and would it work over the pond. thanks


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## txdemocrat

What is a cheap way transfer videotapes with recorded shows on it to DVD?


----------



## G00k

I've been spending my vacation trying to convert my vhs home movies to dvd without any real luck.

I thought I had good enough hardware:
3ghz p4, asus mobo, 512mb, 80gb disk (second disk, separate from OS and progs), ATI All-In-Wonder 9600 card.

I read the review/opinions, and thought I had good software (good enough):
W98se, Pinnacle Studio 8 (latest build downloaded).

I even downloaded a demo of MainConcept's EVE 2.

I've spent hours crashing, locking up, watching nothing happening when it's supposed to be rendering a 1 minute test video. Not to mention that my wife is asking what-am-I-doing-in-there-all-day-when-it's-so-nice-outside? all the time.

Then in a conversation at a party (where I'm not really there, but pondering why the heck else I can do to get over the hump in this project), someone mentions that they have a dvr/tape combo that they can dump their tapes to dvd directly. My wife says. "maybe with all the time and effort you've wasted, it might be simpler to go out and buy one of those."

I'm tempted.

But that would be admitting defeat. That I'm not the hotshot geek I thought I was any longer. That I'm getting too old to absorb new concepts, juggle the myriad facets involved in the project (hardware/software/firmware).

And given the fact that so far, in this and many other forums I've visited, I get answer B to question A many of the times I've posted. EG: If I ask how much total disk space would be needed to fill a 4.5GB DVD with a movie produced via capture,editing and rendering to hard disk, I get an answer like "The different capture quality settings make the finished video look differently" with no mention of disk capacity.

Heck, of course I'm going to try to use the best capture quality - I'm saving lilttle Bumpkin's first bath, first steps, etc. But what I'm asking is given that I'm doing this at all, I want a good guesstimate of how much disk sapce dos the entire project take? What I want to know is why doesn't Pinnacle Studio 8 seem to be doing anything while supposedly rendering for 6 hours for a 1 minute test video?

I've got 6-8 tapes of this stuff! I'd like to edit it down to a managable (viewable) length. But none of the software seems to work. Do I _HAVE_ to upgrade to XP? (I really don't want to - I'd rather go LINUX, but there's precious little editing software out there that I can find, and it's not for the faint of heart).

Maybe I'm too old - get a dvr/tape combo - or farm it out to a production house and be done with it...

Regards,

G00k


----------



## Tush

Hi just a note if you have Premiere you can get the titledeko plug in to use with the program that is great for adding Titles , also you can make titles in PhotoShop and inport them as footage.


----------



## Tush

owhong said:


> Hi Mulder,
> Thank you very much for the reply. There is one thing I found in WMM that no other video editing software, I have, does is its ability to use IME. I am able to enter non-alphabet characters in WMM but not in Premier, etc. If you know about any software that allow one to enter non-alphabet characters (in particular, Chinese), I would be most grateful to learn from you. My search (months) in this has not been successful yet. A problem with WMM that I am facing is that it does not take in MOV files that I record using my digi cam. I am still in search of right tools for myself. I am trying to get my hands on Screenblast.
> Regards
> owhong


You can use any characters in PhotoShop and import them into premiere as footage hope this helps


----------



## Mulderator

G00k said:


> I've been spending my vacation trying to convert my vhs home movies to dvd without any real luck.
> 
> I thought I had good enough hardware:
> 3ghz p4, asus mobo, 512mb, 80gb disk (second disk, separate from OS and progs), ATI All-In-Wonder 9600 card.
> 
> I read the review/opinions, and thought I had good software (good enough):
> W98se, Pinnacle Studio 8 (latest build downloaded).
> 
> I even downloaded a demo of MainConcept's EVE 2.
> 
> I've spent hours crashing, locking up, watching nothing happening when it's supposed to be rendering a 1 minute test video. Not to mention that my wife is asking what-am-I-doing-in-there-all-day-when-it's-so-nice-outside? all the time.
> 
> Then in a conversation at a party (where I'm not really there, but pondering why the heck else I can do to get over the hump in this project), someone mentions that they have a dvr/tape combo that they can dump their tapes to dvd directly. My wife says. "maybe with all the time and effort you've wasted, it might be simpler to go out and buy one of those."
> 
> I'm tempted.
> 
> But that would be admitting defeat. That I'm not the hotshot geek I thought I was any longer. That I'm getting too old to absorb new concepts, juggle the myriad facets involved in the project (hardware/software/firmware).
> 
> And given the fact that so far, in this and many other forums I've visited, I get answer B to question A many of the times I've posted. EG: If I ask how much total disk space would be needed to fill a 4.5GB DVD with a movie produced via capture,editing and rendering to hard disk, I get an answer like "The different capture quality settings make the finished video look differently" with no mention of disk capacity.
> 
> Heck, of course I'm going to try to use the best capture quality - I'm saving lilttle Bumpkin's first bath, first steps, etc. But what I'm asking is given that I'm doing this at all, I want a good guesstimate of how much disk sapce dos the entire project take? What I want to know is why doesn't Pinnacle Studio 8 seem to be doing anything while supposedly rendering for 6 hours for a 1 minute test video?
> 
> I've got 6-8 tapes of this stuff! I'd like to edit it down to a managable (viewable) length. But none of the software seems to work. Do I _HAVE_ to upgrade to XP? (I really don't want to - I'd rather go LINUX, but there's precious little editing software out there that I can find, and it's not for the faint of heart).
> 
> Maybe I'm too old - get a dvr/tape combo - or farm it out to a production house and be done with it...
> 
> Regards,
> 
> G00k


I feel your pain G00k but don't give up just yet. Try this:

http://www.ulead.com/vs/runme.htm

It has a free trial--like Pinnacle, but if you get the same problem with this, then you know its not Pinnacle. Its 173 Meg download so you need high speed internet connection or you have them mail you a trial CD.

However, what I have been recommending to everyone is forget burning to DVDs--it is cumbersome, time consuming, and the chances of error expand exponentially and the media is notorious for problems.

What you should do is get yourself a big hard drive (200 Gigs or better) and store all your movies on your hard drive. You then buy another one to back them all up to after your done. I have 15 years of movies taking up about 100 Gigs.

DON'T BUY THE DVD RECORDER. Spend your money on this instead:

http://www.adstech.com/products/USBAV702/intro/usb702intro.asp?pid=USBAV702

This will encode your movies to MPEG realtime and you don't have to worry about it crashing your system because its an external encoder that does all the work itself--all it does it write the finished MPEG movie to your hard drive. You have three standard choices (4,6 and 9) Mps--use 4 or 6 as most of the DVD authoring programs will recognize that and burn to DVD without re-encoding it.

Now once you get all your movies on your hard drive, you can then pick selected movies and burn them directly to DVD or bring them into Pinnacle or Ulead and work with the compressed movie to make video productions. Pinnacle or Ulead will then render it much much quicker because it won't have to encode to MPEG--its already done.

You can hook that ADS box to either your camcorder or your VHS (if you have the older S-VHS movies).

It really is the best way to go because the future is integrated computer and home entertainments systems. I play all my home movies directly from my computer to my television so I don't need to find DVDs--they movies are all listed right there on the screen and I just click which one I want to play.

If you burn to DVD, you will end up putting them all back on a hard drive someday anyway.


----------



## osha

Mulder: I'm thinking of getting the adstech instant dvd+dv box and in 

looking at the specifications I see a single 4 prong firewire which I assume is

input or output , but if you are capturing from your dv camcorder and out-

putting instant mpeg 2 , using the firewire from the camcorder to the adstech

box , then the connection from the box to the puter must have to be usb2.

Is this so and if so , is the quality at least as good as the original 3 software

method you reccomended at the top? I certainly can see the convenience

factor , but for those one or two extra special vids where you want the 

best you can get out of your camcorder what would you say?


............thanks for your opinion and this whole sticky --it's helped me get

started on the movie road..........osha


----------



## Mulderator

osha said:


> Mulder: I'm thinking of getting the adstech instant dvd+dv box and in
> 
> looking at the specifications I see a single 4 prong firewire which I assume is
> 
> input or output , but if you are capturing from your dv camcorder and out-
> 
> putting instant mpeg 2 , using the firewire from the camcorder to the adstech
> 
> box , then the connection from the box to the puter must have to be usb2.
> 
> Is this so and if so , is the quality at least as good as the original 3 software
> 
> method you reccomended at the top? I certainly can see the convenience
> 
> factor , but for those one or two extra special vids where you want the
> 
> best you can get out of your camcorder what would you say?
> 
> ............thanks for your opinion and this whole sticky --it's helped me get
> 
> started on the movie road..........osha


You are correct that the input is USB-2, but its still digital so there is no loss in quality. To be quite honest, though, when using S-Video Analog I could not tell the difference between it and using the firewire connection. I didn't like using the firewire connection because I had problems with monitoring the input (i.e., the capture monitoring screen on the software would freeze). You also have less use of the controls for the camcorder--the analog lets you control the camcorder. But these may just have been problems I ran into with my system. But either way, encoding your movies directly to MPEG-2 save a huge amount of time. If you've ever sat waiting for a video program to encode to MPEG-2, you know what I mean (and that's if it doesn't crash your system).


----------



## ctuna

Mulder
Would you check a problem in Multimedia under DVD Express where I am having a problem burning Direct to Disk.
Ctuna


----------



## briarrabbit

****

I had precisely the same problems as you. Tried different capture devices on my PIII - no luck. Tried them also on an Athlon 2600. Slightly better rubbish. Wouldn't capture properly from a VCR or my videocam.

I have to differ from the advice given by Mulder, though he is the acknowledged expert. If you want to transfer tapes to DVD, THIS DOES WORK:

1. forget buying a capture card. Invest your money instead in a DVD Recorder [I have Pioneer but others I'm sure are fine]. Input analogue into AV inputs and burn to a disk.

2. To edit: use Womble MPEG Video Wizard [ it will take the VOB files directly - just drag and drop to your HD]

3. To author: use TMPEGEnc DVD Author - simple wizard interface. Good outcomes.
----------------------------------------------------------------
The result? Perfect professional looking DVD's with menus, chapters etc. No synch problems, VERY fast, because you don't have to re-encode.

I've also tried Ulead MovieFactory and VideoStudio, both of which were a bit clunky, hogged processor resources and had synch. problems. But I've been trialling the Ulead DVD Workshop and though it is very powerful, hogs resources less and gives good results from the original burned disk. Also quite fast in outputting.

DVD Recorders are comparatively inexpensive, even here in Oz now. Mine isn't an HD version [which I will get next] but if you want just download your analogue on to rewriteable disks to lessen wasteage. Someone told me at the outset not to "waste" money on a DVD Recorder but it gives exceptional results. I've also tried throughputting from a Digicam to the HD but there is the extra LENGTHY process then of using TMPEGEnc to convert DV AVI to MPEG.

Good luck. Hope this helps.


----------



## Mulderator

briarrabbit said:


> ****
> 
> I had precisely the same problems as you. Tried different capture devices on my PIII - no luck. Tried them also on an Athlon 2600. Slightly better rubbish. Wouldn't capture properly from a VCR or my videocam.
> 
> I have to differ from the advice given by Mulder, though he is the acknowledged expert. If you want to transfer tapes to DVD, THIS DOES WORK:
> 
> 1. forget buying a capture card. Invest your money instead in a DVD Recorder [I have Pioneer but others I'm sure are fine]. Input analogue into AV inputs and burn to a disk.
> 
> 2. To edit: use Womble MPEG Video Wizard [ it will take the VOB files directly - just drag and drop to your HD]
> 
> 3. To author: use TMPEGEnc DVD Author - simple wizard interface. Good outcomes.
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> The result? Perfect professional looking DVD's with menus, chapters etc. No synch problems, VERY fast, because you don't have to re-encode.
> 
> I've also tried Ulead MovieFactory and VideoStudio, both of which were a bit clunky, hogged processor resources and had synch. problems. But I've been trialling the Ulead DVD Workshop and though it is very powerful, hogs resources less and gives good results from the original burned disk. Also quite fast in outputting.
> 
> DVD Recorders are comparatively inexpensive, even here in Oz now. Mine isn't an HD version [which I will get next] but if you want just download your analogue on to rewriteable disks to lessen wasteage. Someone told me at the outset not to "waste" money on a DVD Recorder but it gives exceptional results. I've also tried throughputting from a Digicam to the HD but there is the extra LENGTHY process then of using TMPEGEnc to convert DV AVI to MPEG.
> 
> Good luck. Hope this helps.


That will work fine, but you are going through alot of extra steps. You have to copy to a DVD, then you have to copy from the DVD back to the hard drive, then you need additional software programs to read the VOB files. Most video editors like Pinnacle won't read VOB files so if you want to edit, you then have to translate those back to MPEG-2--that's a lot longer and complicated process. With a hardware capture card, you encode directly to an MPEG-2 file on hard drive. By the time I'm done encoding a movie to the hard drive, you're only done copying it to DVD. Then you have to transfer it back to the hard drive, but its in VOB format. Then, if you want to edit it, you have to encode or translate it back to MPEG-2 from the VOB file. That is definitely NOT a better way to edit video. That's a better system ONLY if all you want to do is tranfer movies to DVD and be done with it. But frankly as I have said, I would never burn to DVD now that large hard drives are so large. Put all your home movies on your hard drive (much easier than burning to DVDs and much more relialbe), then back it up to a second hard drive and keep it at a relatives house in case of fire or theft.


----------



## Mulderator

briarrabbit said:


> I've also tried throughputting from a Digicam to the HD but there is the extra LENGTHY process then of using TMPEGEnc to convert DV AVI to MPEG.


I think you are missing the fact that the ADS box and other hardware encoders *encode the DV AVI to MPEG-2 realtime!* In other words, you hook your camcorder up to the ADS box, push play and the record on the box and in the same time as the movie takes to play it is encoded to an MPEG-2 DVD compliant file onto your hard drive. There is no need to convert it to MPEG with TMPGEnc. In fact, the whole point of the hardware encoder is to get an MPEG-2 file onto the hard drive without having to have your computer encode it.

Again, the only way I would recommend a DVD recorder is if all people want to do is transfer movies to DVD and be done with it. But video editing makes the movies so much better. Also, I can play all my home movies right on my Television from my computer by going through a menu and just choosing them. Try doing that with DVDs. What you end up doing is searching through stacks of them to find what your looking for--taking them in and out, etc., etc. and then hoping your DVD isn't scratched or screwed up, which happens often. I find with DVDs, I often get poor playblack.


----------



## gotrootdude

> then hoping your DVD isn't scratched or screwed up, which happens often. I find with DVDs, I often get poor playblack.


With 160gig drives going for $40AR, there's no reason not to get a external case and back up your DVD's to a hard drive or two or three.

Mulder, what program are you using for a front end for your DVD collection? Personally, I use Media Portal along with a MCE remote and a A/V sender.


----------



## Mulderator

gotrootdude said:


> With 160gig drives going for $40AR, there's no reason not to get a external case and back up your DVD's to a hard drive or two or three.
> 
> Mulder, what program are you using for a front end for your DVD collection? Personally, I use Media Portal along with a MCE remote and a A/V sender.


I use a Momitsu networked DVD player, which plays MPEG files form the hard drive. Its a fairly high end DVD player (although only $299) which upscales DVDs--the difference is pretty signficant over most store brand DVD players. I don't have any DVDs on hard drives, its all our home movies.


----------



## gotrootdude

Must be nice.. The only thing I got like that is a Apex AD 660 running hacked Sampo firmware with a IDE cable hanging off the back that I can plug a hard drive into. I bought it for $40 around two years ago, so you know it's high quality.  Stutters and pixellizes everything.

Instead of buying a new updated DVD player, I bought a A/V sender from compgeeks.com for $18, and play anything the Apex doesn't like on the windows media center in the bedroom on the TV in the living room.


----------



## afattoruso

Greetings Mulder! Do all the same tips apply for Macs, or is your guide PC only? Clearly the apps will be different. Is there a Mulder for Macs?

Thanks.

Alex


----------



## Mulderator

gotrootdude said:


> Must be nice.. The only thing I got like that is a Apex AD 660 running hacked Sampo firmware with a IDE cable hanging off the back that I can plug a hard drive into. I bought it for $40 around two years ago, so you know it's high quality.  Stutters and pixellizes everything.
> 
> Instead of buying a new updated DVD player, I bought a A/V sender from compgeeks.com for $18, and play anything the Apex doesn't like on the windows media center in the bedroom on the TV in the living room.


Yes, there are cheaper options for networking, but if you have High Def television and good surround sound, you cannot beat the qaulity, both video and audio of the higher end DVD players. MS is coming out with the XBox later this year to compete with the networked DVD player market, although it likely won't be as good quality in playing DVDs.


----------



## Mulderator

afattoruso said:


> Greetings Mulder! Do all the same tips apply for Macs, or is your guide PC only? Clearly the apps will be different. Is there a Mulder for Macs?
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Alex


Actually, you have a disctinct advantage with Macs because they do a much better job with video editing. And yes all of the above does apply to Macs provided the specific software has Mac versions, but it should be the same.


----------



## linskyjack

No they dont! Another bit of accepted mythology authored by the Cult of Jobs.


----------



## Mulderator

linskyjack said:


> No they dont! Another bit of accepted mythology authored by the Cult of Jobs.


No--its not mythology. Windows computers can be built to do a good job at video editing at significantly more cost than a Mac that will do the same thing. The average "out of the box" Mac is simply a superior video editing and graphics computer in general. Believe me--I'm no Mac fan, but those computers are more advanced when it comes to graphics--they were built with that in mind. Anyone who owns both will tell you the same thing.


----------



## gotrootdude

I got mplayer for GClinux running on a gamecube, it supports mpeg,mpeg2,divx,xvid,mp3,ogg,matrosky,etc. I load the .dol file that starts the linux system using action-replay and SD-load. The component output when playing xvid and divx files on the gamecube really does a great job. I'm using a logitech 5.1 system with matrixing enabled for sound on it. Since I have a battery pack for it, and one of those 5" Lcd screens, it's great to take along camping. May not be a ultra high end DVD player, but what high end DVD player comes with a carrying handle and supports so many formats.

Also, I love the ability to burn 4-7 full length movies in high quality divx,xvid,mkv on one disk. To bad it doesn't play store bought movie DVD's yet (needs some linux tweaking). But, I only burn shows off the TV anyway... 

For anyone wanting to do this, mplayer for the gamecube is a proof of concept demo, linux on the cube is very new, although it works it's still a bit buggy. Sure plays better than my hacked Apex, Coby, and Magnavox dvd players though, no artifacts or stuttering.. I believe the GC has quite a bit more processor power for decoding the videos..


----------



## CaptainTimmy

I looked at DVD recorders at a big-box retailer. The stand-alone recorders are able to fit up to 6 or 8 hours of content on a single-sided DVD-R. They claim to comsume approximately 1G of disk space per hour of record time (rough estimate). Why can you not fit the same amount when creating a DVD on your PC? 

Must be a format difference? Is there a way to fit more on a single disk?

Thanks,
CT


----------



## gotrootdude

Is there a way to fit more on a single disk?

Yes, but it depends both on your DVD player, and what quality your willing to accept. You can get 8 hours on one DVD with at a bitrate of 1.25 Mbps and a resolution of 352x288, or "super extended play".. Or 6 hours of Super Long Play at 1.7 Mbps / 352x576.. Or 4 hours of Extended Play at 2.55 Mbps / 352x576, or 3 hours of Long Play at 3.25 Mbps / 352x576, or 2? hours of Long Standard Play at 4.05 Mbps / 720x576..

If your DVD player also accepts divx and xvid, you can get quite good file-sizes, and can expect 1/3-1/4 of the size of the mpeg movie with really low to no detectable loss of quality.. Which allows an amazing 20 or so hours on one single sided DVD..

The mpeg2 format that DVD's use is a very dated codec and does poorly at low bitrates, as you can see here:

http://graphics.tomshardware.com/video/20050617/divx6-03.html

Personally, I'd like to see everyone use a HTPC instead of a DVD player/recorder. 
You can build one really cheaply using mythTV and a BT878 tuner card.
I've built at least 10 of them, and am in the process of building a portable one using a mini-itx motherboard ($98) a PSone LCD ($25) ebay
http://lagnarok.no-ip.com/index.html
,a spare hard drive, a gamecube battery ($15), a USB tuner, and a custom case made from floor linoleum bought from the dollar store .. Add on a USB wireless card and you got a good machine. Depending on how it turns out, I may make more of them and sell them on ebay.


----------



## CaptainTimmy

What suggestions do you have for the type of PC to use for recording? 
Processor, Video Capture Card, DVD drive?

Thanks


----------



## Mulderator

CaptainTimmy said:


> What suggestions do you have for the type of PC to use for recording?
> Processor, Video Capture Card, DVD drive?
> 
> Thanks


What do you mean by "recording?" What makes a difference is video editing. In that case, you want a fast processor with fast large hard drives. Video capture card does not matter near as much--any mid range card with good graphics is fine. Get the fastest DVD drive you can, obviously.


----------



## CaptainTimmy

Thanks.

I am merely recording. Won't be doing any editing, at least not for this particuar application. 

It will be interesting to see how rebust XP is. I don't have much faith in MS operating systems. I need something that's going to be dependable.

Thanks again


----------



## uscfan

Hi all (this is my first post)
I have a large video file that I believe is mpeg2 and it is 6 gigs. It won't fit onto a DVD+R (4.7 gigs). I converted it to mpeg4 and it is now 3 gigs. Does anyone know of a way that I can do one of two things:

1)shrink the mpeg2 and burn it to a dvd to play in a stand alone dvd player (maybe something that is similar to dvd shrink??)
2)burn the mpeg4 file on to a dvd to play in a stand alone dvd player

I haven't been able to find anything that can modify an mpeg4 file to play on a dvd. Please help.

thanks
uscfan


----------



## Mulderator

uscfan said:


> Hi all (this is my first post)
> I have a large video file that I believe is mpeg2 and it is 6 gigs. It won't fit onto a DVD+R (4.7 gigs). I converted it to mpeg4 and it is now 3 gigs. Does anyone know of a way that I can do one of two things:
> 
> 1)shrink the mpeg2 and burn it to a dvd to play in a stand alone dvd player (maybe something that is similar to dvd shrink??)
> 2)burn the mpeg4 file on to a dvd to play in a stand alone dvd player
> 
> I haven't been able to find anything that can modify an mpeg4 file to play on a dvd. Please help.
> 
> thanks
> uscfan


There are many DVD players out there now that do play MPEG-4. As far as reducing the size of the MPEG-2, you can do that simply by increasing the compression rate. I am not sure what compression you have done, but there are parameters that work within the DVD specifications. How long is that DVD timewise? You should be able to fit a little more than two hours on a DVD at the lowest quality so if it is that or less, you can do it. If its more, than you will need to splite the movie into two different DVDs just like they do with commercial DVDs.


----------



## ZyphonZest

Hey. My mom got this DVD recorder thing and she's asking me to copy a dvd for her. I think it's a LITEON LVW-5005, if that means anything. Well, I put the movie in the regular DVD player, and a blank dvd in the recorder. I connected the player's output to the recorder's input, and played the movie. I pressed record, too, but nothing's going on. I don't know, I'm no expert, but I'd say it doesn't work that way. One machine to another. I'm trying to display the movie on the tv and then record from that, but I don't have enough cables. Will anyone help me?


----------



## accat13

Sorry ZyphonZest Copying (commercial) movies is not supported on this forum its illegal. I apologize ahead of time if this is a backup of a home movie. But for your own curiosity the liteon will not get around the dvd protection.(possibly called macro vision).Many people buy these dvd recorders thinking they can copy (commercial) movies, sorry won't work in most cases.


----------



## pushed

I AM SO SORRY BUT..... i am very new to computers & i know i am probably gonna get up someone's nose but i have read this guide & i dont understand it!!
i have an analog video camera & i want to convert my tapes into dvds please tell me what i software i need..
please dont bite my head off just remember..... 
"There's no such thing as a stupid question,
but they're the easiest to answer!"


----------



## cattch08

Hi im not all that good on computers but had the same problem. i bought some software called dvdxpress which does the job but can be expensive. if you live in england ALDI are doing one for £29.99 this week good luck


----------



## daddyhominum

I am surprised at how difficult taking movies from the video camera might be.

I have an ATI AIW and regularly take movies from the camera, edit them and burn them to CD. 
I use a number of editors including WMM2 but prefer Movie Maker Deluxe 3 to most. I prefer to record in Divx format(Xvid) for best quality/compression ratio. 

No matter which editor one uses, copying from one format to another is very slow so I normally capture with the codec I intend to use for the final product.

I prefer to copy analog with Hi-8 camera to capturing with a DV camera but that is because I just cannot afford to spend the thousands necessary for a high end consumer DV camera. 

While ATI has a miserable history with drivers, I have used their AIW now fo about 5 years and accomplished nearly all I wished to do with it. If only I could find an editing program as satsfactory as the card.

My 2 cents and probably overcharging.

D.


----------



## cwestphal

Do you know any software that will capture movies from VCR directly to produce movies ion DVDs??


----------



## daddyhominum

VHS tapes such as movies are protected by Macrovision which makes copying them difficult. If you can find a video stabilizer(hardware) to fit between the vcr and the tv input on your video card, you will be able to capture from VHS.(http://www.checkhere22.com/stabilizer.html)
Your capture software and the available codecs on your system provide options for capture format from VCD to DVD. You can output from your capture format to any preferred format to your DVD.

So you need a hardware stabilizer. You need an editing program that will capture and a editing program that will output you format choice. And you need a burner with a burning program.

We like Movie Maker deluxe for software because it has the options we want for capture and for output.(www.moviemagix.com)

Video processing is a huge load on a processor. To capture and output and burn simultaneously will require huge resources for memory and processor. But it is quite manageable in a few hours if capture, output(render) and burn are done as distinct processes.

I do not capture VHS unless it is out of print and then only for my own library.

BTW, there are video stabilizer programs available. They are not the same as hardware stabilizers.


----------



## Birdynumnum

Need a bit of help. My mate sent me some camcorder footage on a disk in high quality AVI format. It play without any problems on my PC but I wanted to put it onto DVD. I therefore used Nero 6 to encode the file to MPEG2 and burn it to DVD however when I play it on my DVD player, the brightness is extreamly bright and I have to turn it right down before I can watch it. At first I thought it was my DVD player so tried it on another DVD player and on my PC but all come out with the same result. I have tried looking for some brightness options within Nero but there doesn't seem to be anything? How can I fix this so it burns with the same brightness as the original file and I dont have to turn down the brightness of my TV


----------



## daddyhominum

Sounds like a job for ....AVI2MPG2 !!

You can download it in many places online. Very helpful program.

Then just burn it with Nero.

D


----------



## go4saket

Hey Mulder, this is simply a great thread. Well, I too have a problem that I am sure you can help me with...

I have a few DVD movies stored in my HDD. I actually use DVD Shrink to reduce the size of the original movie. Now I have the video_ts folder with all the files needed i.e. .bup, .ifo & .vob files.

Now I want to burn two to three movies on a single DVD. Size is not a problem as I have already reduced the size. The problem is how do I create Menus for these movies. Is there any software which will help me to create menus for these. I tries Nero but the problem with it is that most of the time it gets held up and the other problem is that it again encodes the movie. With every encoding the quality of the movie falls.

So, how do I create a menu and if possible, without encoding the movie again.

Thank you.


----------



## ron40

Mulder:

I bought the ADSTECH usb instant TV last december to convert my hi8 analog tapes to DVD. Right from the beginning I had problems with the sound & picture. The pic was fine in the beginning, but subsequently became "scrambled." The sound alternated between good & distorted with echos, ADS tech support was very helpful & quick to answer, no complaints there. After a fair amount of trouble shooting with them they concluded that the usb connection was flaky & told me to send it back for warranty repair. After 2 1/2 weeks I got it back & the pic was indeed fine, but the sound recording was as bad as ever. I called tech supp again & the ts guy told me it had to be interference from something: video cam, sound card etc. He also said that it might be a usb connection from another device. I've checked every usb connection; even replaced the sound card, to no avail. The recorded sound from my analog video cam varys between good & terrible. It starts out good but then deteriorates. I am now wondering if the problem could be in the video camera, which I am using as the player. However, I can't find an analog hi8 player on the market.


I have given up on this device. It would be perfect were it not for the audio problem. I am now looking for a capture card.

Very disgusted. This project is taking much too long

Ron40


----------



## wolfworx

You might try a test of your capture connection.

Connect your video and audio cables to the output of a VCR tuned to your TV to see if you still have an audio problem with ordinary TV progeamming. I'll bet you do not. Many tapes and tape drives will send added noise to your computer. Using short, gold plated cables or a different tape player may help.


----------



## go4saket

go4saket said:


> Hey Mulder, this is simply a great thread. Well, I too have a problem that I am sure you can help me with...
> 
> I have a few DVD movies stored in my HDD. I actually use DVD Shrink to reduce the size of the original movie. Now I have the video_ts folder with all the files needed i.e. .bup, .ifo & .vob files.
> 
> Now I want to burn two to three movies on a single DVD. Size is not a problem as I have already reduced the size. The problem is how do I create Menus for these movies. Is there any software which will help me to create menus for these. I tries Nero but the problem with it is that most of the time it gets held up and the other problem is that it again encodes the movie. With every encoding the quality of the movie falls.
> 
> So, how do I create a menu and if possible, without encoding the movie again.
> 
> Thank you.


Please help...


----------



## ron40

Dear Wolfworx:

Thanx so much for your reply. It makes a lot of sense that the cam is probably the source of the prob. I would like to check out the inputs using the method you suggest but there is no tv connection by my pc. I have an idea though. I have a pioneer dvr220. If I copy the tape to a -rw dvd on the dvr220, I can then play that dvd on the dvr & attach its analog outputs to the instant tv & thus copy to my pc. I know that i will be doing several reduntant analog to digital conversions, but these are not very high quality tapes & are only wanted for their sentimental value (which is quite high). If the quality is decent, I will be satisfied. That's better than buying a better quality device for $200 or more.

Ron


----------



## ron40

To: Wolfworx

I copied the hi8 tape to dvd -rw using the pioneer 220dvr. Guess what? It was perfect when I played it on my tv from the pioneer but when I brought the pioneer down to my pc & tried to record it to my pc through the usb instant tv using the analog outputs from the pioneer, the same prob was there: distorted noise. I think this instant tv is worthless for copying from tapes. At least from MY tapes. I though the pioneer would filter out any noise, but I guess i was wrong.
You might ask why i don't put the dvd directly into my pc from the pioneeer? I tried that initially, but without success. Now i'll have to revisit that idea.

Ron40


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## thecoalman

Here's my method and it's not for the faint of wallet... 

A little background first. Analog video once converted to digital is what is. There's not much you can do to improve it after that. The best thing to do for high quality capture is fix it before it's converted. This requires analog hardware.

The first and most important thing is your playback device, a good VCR is recommended if your doing VHS. I use a JVC 9991 S-Video deck with a LTBC/DNR feature. The LTBC/DNR feature adds about $200 to the cost of the deck.... like I said it's not for the faint of wallet. The LTBC or Line Time Based Corrector corrects horizontal sync (if you have video that appears wavy), the DNR is a noise reduction filter and can work miracles on some tapes. Note that many software apps come with noise reduction filters but in no way compare to a hardware filter. Software filters work well when used lightly but will not remove heavy noise without destroying the detail of the video.... It by itself is a excellent choice in combination with a good capture device.

My second piece of hardware in the chain is a Full Frame TBC. This differs from the LTBC in the JVC in that it restores both horizontal and vertical sync in a analog signal. Within the TBC is enough memory to buffer four full frames. As each frame comes in the timing is stripped and it resyncs each line until it has a full frame and spits it out. This removes any timing errors and will fix things such as wavy video and/or video that is jumping up and down. It also has the benefit of removing any errors on home videos that can be interpreted as Macrovision which is common for some capture devices.  Macrovision after all is just a video error. Other devices such as the "stabilizers" will remove these errors too but the also can strip out parts of the signal that you want. I you are working with older tapes that have seen better days a TBC is almost required.

Last but not least I have ADVC-110 which converts my video to DV-AVI which is then feed to the comp via firewire. I've seen a lot of setups and and nothing compares to the final output especially if you're working with poor material. Short of having a professional do it (and I'm not referring to the guy on the corner) you won't get a better result.

Trouble is as mentioned it's very expensive setup at $1000, and that's before it gets to the comp. In a lot of cases you won't need the full frame TBC...

There are of course many other alternative that are nearly as good. Probably the best choice for ease and quality is a DVD Recorder. Buyer beware though, all DVD recorders are not the same. Some can have outstanding quality while others won't be worth the cost of the blank disc. Look around for reviews..... Once captured on disc you can rip the footage from disc to HDD and edit and author. Another alternative is if you're in the market for a new digital cam, they work nearly as well as the ADVC-110.


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## thecoalman

ron40 said:


> You might ask why i don't put the dvd directly into my pc from the pioneeer? I tried that initially, but without success. Now i'll have to revisit that idea.
> 
> Ron40


Try DVDDecrypter, you should be able to find a copy on the net somewhere. It's free, you can just rip the footage as MPEG to HDD and do whatever you wish from there.

Many authoring programs also can do this pretty simply, I think Ulead Movie Factory is one but it's becoming pretty common for a lot of authoring apps since so many people are taking the route you are.


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## ron40

To: Thecoalman

DVDDecrypter is no longer available for download. I have nero 6 with vision express 3 & was told that using "recode 2>recode dvd's will convert my vro file to mpeg. However, I have been playing with nero for 2 hours & cannot find recode 2, even though the manual says that I have it. I'm very frustrated.
FYI: I copied the vro file to my hd & changhed the extension from vro to mpg. I can now look at it & play it but the audio is not there.
1. If I already own nero 6 & have been told that i can use the "recode" option to code the file to mpeg2 that is what I would like to try.
2. if that is not a good option than what is a good alternative to dvddecrtpter?

Thanks,

ron40


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## thecoalman

Well I'm not familiar with VRO format but a quick search brought this up: http://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=292057

Some observations from that thread that might help:
1. Finalizing the disc.
2. You need a DVD drive on your computer that supports DVD Ram if that is the type of the disc you have used.
3. Don't use VRO... If it's going to present a lot of trouble and your aim is to just use the recorder for capturing then edit and author on the computer I'd suggest using the video mode.
4. It was suggested VRO is recognized by DVD Decrypter which BTW can be found here:
http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/DVD_Decrypter/1011845169/1

Only 18,000,000 downloads from there alone... and no that's not a typo.

Can't help you with Nero or recode as I have neither.


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## hankmary

I am a new user, that is my excuse. I have installed a TV Tuner and I can play a VCR home movie tape and record it to my hard drive. I then pull it up in MS Movie maker to edit and prepare to burn to DVD. Problem. The captured movie is broken up into dozens of ind short segments, no logic, with black breaks. How can I eliminate these breaks. This is a great forum and I am just beginning to get the hang of all it's features. I hesitate to start a new thread and you seem to be the answer man.


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## thecoalman

Using Movie maker drag a video to the timeline on the bottom. In the preview plane on the right find the frame you want to split and on the bottom of the player is a split button. When you hit that it will split the clip on the time line. You can slpit the black parts you do not want. From ther just right click the the part you do not want and select delete.


On the top there is drop down menu, from there select transitions. Drag a transition between two clips and they'll blend nicely.

Note that when you select split or delete it actually doesn't doing anything to the source file, you're just removing it from the timeline. you need to export the video for the changes to take place.

I'd suggest trying some better software. Try Ulead's Video Studio.


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## hankmary

Thanks for the quick reply. My issue is to address the copy process before I ever get to Movie Maker. Understand the editing part of Movie Maker and I have put two different scenes together in the past, no problem. My question is how can I down load the actual video without the breaks being imposed in the process. The breaks seem to occur each time there is a change in color contrast not just scene. So I have a huge amount of breaks to edit often in the same general scene.


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## thecoalman

So you're getting black breaks in the capture itself? If you're capturing VHS you can expect it to be pretty similar to what's on TV depending on the capture card. Are the black breaks part of the original video? If you don't see them on TV when you play the video they should not be on the video you capture. What card are you using?

-------------


To answer your question:
If it's part of the video AFAIK you can't do that with MM.

I have a high end editor and it can do this to some extent. It has a scene detection search. Essentially it searches for areas where the frames drastically change and marks them. you still have to go to each point and edit it. It's not flawless either, it has a threshold setting, set it higher and it picks up more scene changes which could not be changes. Set it low and it might miss some as the scenes really need to change. Would probably work very well in your case if you have solid color between your scene changes...

Any how you would need to capture each segment seperately if you wnated to do that.


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## go4saket

I recently downloaded Ulead Movie Factory 5 for the basic purpose of creating Menus for DVD. I have a few movie stored in my HDD in DVD format. The problem is that whenever I want to add any movie to the list, the space taken by that movie is much more than it actually is. Say for example a movie of size 1.5 GB takes more than 4 GB and therefore I am unable to add multiple movies on a single DVD. This doesn't happen with any other software.

Please guide me as to how can I overcome this problem.


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## sixstringsym

could anyone tell me how i can record videos and movies off dvd's to put on the pc and then capture frames from those movies so that i can edit commercials and unwanted protions (scenes), then record the edited version onto another dvd? lol, i'm not sure i explained that correctly or not or just confused the question. Thanks for your help.


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## sweetwater

Recently had our 8mm film movies copied to DVDs. Now I'm trying to make copies of the DVDs for my children. I have a DVD R/RW Drive. Use XP and have Windows Movie Maker. And it doesn't look like I can burn a DVD with Windows Media Player; only audio/data CD. Since a DVD R/RW came with my computer, I thought I'd be able to make and copy DVDs. What am I missing here? Any suggestions? Thanks in advance.


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## thecoalman

You should have a burning package... probably Roxio or Nero. They both have disc copy utilities. Can't say I've used them as I have no need but you should have no trouble.


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## sweetwater

If I had a burning package, it would be listed under Programs, wouldn't it?


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## Deathblow

Should be. Is there a folder there with your DVD brand on it?


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## thecoalman

sweetwater said:


> If I had a burning package, it would be listed under Programs, wouldn't it?


Yes, probably Roxio or Nero.


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## sweetwater

I have no idea if I have DVD burning software that came with my Dell computer. Seems that Dell would provided one (or at least suggest I buy one) since my system included a DVD R/RW. I thought Windows Media center or Windows Media Player included everything I needed to play and burn cds and dvds. I don't see anything that looks like it under the Program index in XP. So I went to PC World and saw where they had recommended freeware programs. I downloaded CD BurnerXP Pro 3. Worked great!! Now, I just hope it didn't come with hidden spyware, etc.


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## wolfworx

Hmmm... I.ve found tha most new DVD+/- Rw drive purchases include Nero burning (get it? ) software. I really like Nero and am surprised it is not included with your system purchase.


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## sweetwater

Thank you for suggesting Nero burning tool. I'm familiar with Nero since my son purchased it and burning hardware for my old computer. Unfortunately, I didn't think to save the software before donating the old computer several months ago.


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## rl125

Help! - I am a complete beginner at this and haven't a clue what all the different terms mean. My problem is I have used Windows Movie Maker to edit and put in transitions etc but find I can't now burn it to DVD. So I tried to use Nero to burn onto DVD but have to start all over again as it won't accept the file I made in WMM. I find Nero a lot more difficult to use and am a bit lost. Is there no way I can burn to DVD from WMM or alternatively can I use the film I made on WMM to burn on Nero. Please if you can help use very simple language as I really know nothing


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## Groggy

This thread contains more information than I can ever understand about the subject, it might even contain the answer(s) to my question. I don't know enough about the subject to determine if it does. If It does, I'd appreciate it if someone would just point me to the right post(s). Here goes:

My friend wants to know how to get movies made with a camcorder (Canon Zr-200) burned onto a DVD disk and be able to replay that disk through an external (to the computer) DVD reader/player onto her TV. She has been able to get the movie onto her computer hard drive, and burned onto a DVD disk. But that disk only plays the movie on her computer. Her external DVD reader/player will not play the disk into her TV. It wasn't clear to me in all the posts that I've read here whether or not they were referring to playback on the computer, or on another, external DVD player, or both. Obviously, I'm new to this subject.

Could someone tell me in simple (is that possible?) terms what kind of hw/sw is required to burn a DVD that will be read by an arbitrary, external DVD reader for playback in a TV? And an explanation of the process to do this? Also, instead of all the options available, would someone just pick and identify ONE method? She has the hw/sw required to get the camcorder tape onto her hard drive and burned onto a DVD. Do you need more information?

Can you tell I don't know what I'm talking about? Yes? Have sympathy.


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## wolfworx

I am currently using Tsunami DVD Easy Pack To make DVD's playable on most DVD players. I cost me about $40. You might consider Ulead Video Studio as well. Note that homade DVDs may not always play properly on some DVD players. I have found that sometimes cheaper ones work better. My $35 Cyber Home DVD unit plays almost everything I burn!


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## Groggy

I can't believe no responses to my original post. Maybe I used too many words. 

I can burn a DVD starting with a camcorder tape. That DVD runs on my computer but it will not run on another DVD player I have connected to my TV. What do I have to do to burn a DVD that will play on that DVD player?


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## Deathblow

What type of DVD disk is it?


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## Groggy

Thanks for the reply.
Actually, I'm posting this for a friend who is not here now, so I can't answer that question right away. Suppose I take a guess and say DVD+RW. Is that suffient info? I don't know anything about this stuff so this may take more than one question.


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## Deathblow

Well, I need to know what type of Disks they are exactly. Whether they're -r, +r, +rw, etc. And then I'll need to know what type of players you've tried. Since you don't have the information handy, how about I give ya a link that might help answer your question.

http://www.videohelp.com/dvdplayers.php


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## Groggy

Thanks. I saw this link in a previous post and it blew me away. Let me study it a bit more earnestly and see if I can make heads or tails of it. Worst case, I'll get the info needed and get back to this site. It may take a couple of go-arounds. I appreciate the response.:up:


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## thecoalman

Groggy said:


> Thanks. I saw this link in a previous post and it blew me away.


That link will only tell what types of discs and other formats a DVD player will play. Disc type aside it laso has to be dvd compliant (the files) to play on most standalone players. For that you need authoring software, to make it simple if you can add chapter points you're using authoring software.

As another example you can't accomplish this Windows Movie Maker... yuou can edit and export video suitable for authoring software to convert but you can't author a disc with it.


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## Groggy

thecoalman said:


> That link will only tell what types of discs and other formats a DVD player will play. Disc type aside it laso has to be dvd compliant (the files) to play on most standalone players. For that you need authoring software, to make it simple if you can add chapter points you're using authoring software.
> 
> As another example you can't accomplish this Windows Movie Maker... yuou can edit and export video suitable for authoring software to convert but you can't author a disc with it.


To state it simply so that both I and my friend can understand this; first we need to match the DVD player to the type of disk that player can handle, and the link you provided helps us do that and, second, we need "authoring" software that will burn a disk on our computer that will play on an external DVD player. OK so far??

Thanks again.


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## thecoalman

Groggy said:


> OK so far??.


Correct, " DVD" meant to be played on a standalone DVD player has a specific specification for the files and a specific file and folder structure. This will be the same no matter what type of disc you burn it too and should play on any computer DVD rom drive.

Authoring software converts and assembles the files to meet these specifications. you can't simply burn the video file to disc and expect it to play... however there are some standalones that do support this for some types of video files.

The type of disc compatibility is another issue altogether but if you follow that link and find the player you should have no problem if you buy the discs it supports.


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## Groggy

thecoalman said:


> Correct, " DVD" meant to be played on a standalone DVD player has a specific specification for the files and a specific file and folder structure. This will be the same no matter what type of disc you burn it too and should play on any computer DVD rom drive.
> 
> Authoring software converts and assembles the files to meet these specifications. you can't simply burn the video file to disc and expect it to play... however there are some standalones that do support this for some types of video files.
> 
> The type of disc compatibility is another issue altogether but if you follow that link and find the player you should have no problem if you buy the discs it supports.


Thanks, the fog is beginning to lift.


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## stryker23

Hello all, I have been using the ADS DVD Xpress capture device for sometime now. I've had it since it was first mentioned in this forum a pretty long ways back. I've used it to convert numerous home videos (VHS & VHS-C), but the quality is not all that great. The picture is faded and somewhat washed out once it is on the computer. Some tapes appear to be more noticeable than others. Has anyone else who used this device noticed such a problem? Another misfortune i have with this device is that the computer will periodically stop recognizing that it's connected. The only way to fix this is to completely uninstall and reinstall it. As for the bundled software I find the Ulead Movie Factory software a bit cumbersome and sluggish. 

I'm looking to find a better capture device, but I don't want to be disappointed by purchasing something that also does not stay at least close to the original picture. Does anyone have any suggestions? I'm not even sure what I should be looking for. What delivers the best quality a PCI card or an external device? Any suggestion would be much appreciated. I'd like to keep this under $200.


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## thecoalman

stryker23 said:


> but the quality is not all that great. The picture is faded and somewhat washed out once it is on the computer.


You can't judge a made for TV video on a computer. How does it look once you get it on disc and view on your TV?


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## stryker23

thecoalman said:


> You can't judge a made for TV video on a computer. How does it look once you get it on disc and view on your TV?


It appears the same on the tv as it does on the computer. I've have also tried changing the quality settings and that also does not improve the color of the picture.


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## thecoalman

stryker23 said:


> I've have also tried changing the quality settings and that also does not improve the color of the picture.


Before or after you capture the file? The device you are using is aMPEG capture device, as such you should avoid extensive editing or reencoding the material.... In other words once it's on your computer besides cutting or trimming using a editing or authoring tool that will only reencode the parts you have changed it you shouldn't do anything to it.

Anyhow do you have a digital video camera? Most have a passthrough feature, you would usae the cam as you would the converter you are using now. If you have one with that feature it would be very easy to give it try.

Analog conversions are tough but if done properly with good equipment you can expect about what you see on the original tape. Sometimes even better with some light filtering.


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## stryker23

When i said "it looks the same on the tv as on the computer" I mean't that after I had captured it and burnt it to a disc it looked the same as it did on the computer (not like the original). That's with no editing besides what the authoring program does.

I do have a digital video camera. I don't know if it has that capability, I'll check it out.


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## sameerM

TEMPenc3.0 Express Encoder takes almost 24 hours for 4GB MPEG-2 encoding.


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## thecoalman

Encoding times vary depending on a lot of factors suchs as the speed of CPU, the settings you have used in the enecoder, etc. 24 hours is exessive but not unheard of.

Try dropping the quality settings back a little, you'll probably see little difference between the highest and 75%. What CPU do you have?


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## sldwaa

I use a SONY VRD-VC20 external (USB 2) video recordable DVD drive. It will accept a variety of inputs and burn directly to a DVD+R disc. The quality is excellent. You can then subsequently edit the content and reburn. I use DVD+RW as I always edit the content... Just my 2 cents worth...


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## sameerM

thecoalman said:


> What CPU do you have?


Toshiba Qosmio E15-AV101
Processor number 735 
Clock speed 1.7 GHz
RAM installed size 1.5 GB 
RAM Technology DDR SDRAM 
Hard Disk : 120 GB
CD / DVD read speed 24x (CD) / 8x (DVD) 
CD / DVD write speed 24x (CD) / 8x (DVD±R) 
CD / DVD rewrite speed 10x (CD) / 4x (DVD±RW) / 3x (DVD-RAM)
OS provided Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2002, Service pack 2


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## hotskates

I have a Liteon DVD player/burner which I use to mainly burn edited videos onto. The past few months, I just went through 6 "TDK" DVD-R dvds and I was able to burn the videos onto the disks with no problem. Then I tried "SONY" DVD-R and I am unable to burn onto these disks? Could it be the Sony brand has something to do with it being incompatible with the Liteon burner? Or should I mess with the configuration of the Liteon burner?


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## craigwp

* I'm about at wits end. I can copy a dvd I've bought or one a friend gave me and it always plays 100% in my stand alone dvd player.
However,
if I take an avi file and reencode and burn it to a dvd it always seem to hesitate and skip. They play fine on my computer which is a mystery.
I've tried just about all the software I can find to no avail.
The software I use to copy a dvd is either Nero or avi divx to dvd.

Any help or tips would be appreciated. *


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## hansy_han2003

Dear Mulder,
Thanks for the suggestion.Hope to receive more help from U.
Nima Dorji Tamang
Thimphu,Bhutan
[email protected]


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## go4saket

I had some home shot video which I saved in my computer in DV AVI format at 25 FPS. Later I converted the same to MPEG-2 @ 6000 Bitrate & 25 FPS using CCE SP. The problem is that where the video runs absolutely smooth in AVI DV format, as soon as it is converted, it starts kind of skipping frames. What I mean here is, when I see the converted video, it is not smooth as the original. Whenever any object in the video moves, it gives a jerked kind of feeling. I tried to convert the video with a few other softwares like Ulead Video Studio, Windows Movie Maker etc, but all gives the same result. Now, why does this happen and what can I do to overcome this.


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## Spop

I have an old vhs video camera and an usb artec tv tuner with an coaxial input. I planning to use an video editing program in Linux called cinerella. My question is how to get my videos on my computer, so I can edit them the old cheap way?


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## Deathblow

Should be able to input them to the card through the coax and then use a capture program. Usually the cards come with one.


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## Spop

This card didn't come with anything to plug into my video camera. What is the thing called that I need? I know it has yellow, red, and white ends on one side and a coax end on the other end.


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## Deathblow

Which camera? You could probably use a RCA to Coax cable for the picture, but you'll need something that does the sound as well.


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## wolfworx

Sounds like a composit video to RF converter.

The Yellow RCA plug (or jack, you did not specify gender) is for video while the Red and white are left and right audio. The coax is probably for RF either from incoming cable or to TV's Coax input.


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## cliobritt

Great guide!

Many thanks.


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## aimeelou

Being a newcomer to the site I hope I'm not speaking out of turn but, I was going to mention a site, only Deathblow has beaten me to it.

I can thouroughly recommend www.videohelp.com they cover practically everything you need to know about creating, converting and authoring files to create DVD's. As a complete beginner, I've managed to create DVD's that play in my stand alone player without spending a penny on programmes. You can do the lot using freeware tools which they give you links for.

A firm favourite of mine.


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## Ten0000?

This is a little off the topic, but my issue is this: I have a PAL DVD movie that I want to convert to NTSC. I know that my PC will play the DVD, but is there a way to output the DVD while it's playing to my stand-alone DVD recorder?

Since the recorder is recording in the NTSC format, I wouldn't need a conversion program or whatever to be able to watch it on my TV.(?) 

I know there are some cards for PCs that do analog/digital video in/out, but I'm not sure this will solve my problem. 

Can this be done or am I just stuck.

thx 
ten


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## twizzie

if i have a have a analog camcorder, can i just purchase a tv tuner card??


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## W0JT

I'm an old-time computer geek but rather new to working with computer video technology, so please pardon any obvious ignorance in my posting.

My video sources are:
- analog camcorder, 8mm tape format
- VHS videocassette recorder/player (analog)
- cable TV system tuner box (analog output)

My goals are to convert analog programming into digital format, with the ability to create either high-quality files for archiving purposes, or compact files for posting on web sites, and various steps in between.

Unlike Muldar, I have an inherent distrust of hard drives for long-term storage of anything valuable, so I hoped that backing up large video files to DVD+R -DL media would be a more secure storage method, even if some of the discs were only readable reliably in a PC.

I have reasonably powerful computer hardware -- 3GHz P4, 800 MHz FSB, 3 Gb DDR DRAM, 200 Gb SATA hard drive, dual IDE DVD-DL drives, NVidia video card, etc.

I bought a Plextor ConvertX PX-M402U external box for doing hardware encoding and compression in any of numerous formats, including MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, and DivX, with lots of options from highest quality (96 minutes per 4.3 Gb DVD) to highest compression (11 hours per 4.3 Gb DVD). It connects to the PC via USB2. It included both WinDVD Creator and ULead Video Studio 8 SE software.

First problem came with the software. I installed WinDVD Creator and used it a bit, and it seemed to work OK. Then I figured that the Ulead software should be more powerful, so I installed that. From that point on, the WinDVD Creator software became unable to capture any video from the PX-M402U. I tried uninstalling Ulead, tried uninstalling and re-installing WinDVD Creator, to no avail. Oh well. It looks like it's Ulead or nothing from this point onward. So, on to working with Ulead.

The capture process is pretty painless and seems to work correctly. I can select the desired capture format, click on the capture button, and everything is converted in real-time. A 2-hour VHS tape is captured in the 2 hours it takes to play it. A 2-hour TV program is captured in the 2 hours it takes for the show to air. No real shock there.

However, when I attempt to exit the program, I get a warning box pop up that tells me that my file is not saved, do I really want to quit? Well, the first time this occurred after a 2-hour session converting a VHS video tape, I could see a 2 Gb AVI file on my hard drive, but feared that it would get deleted as soon as I quit, so I told the software to create a disk file in the same encoding format. In this case, it was a DivX Home Theater High (but not Highest) quality format. *Twenty-two hours later*, I had my mpg file, and it had grown to about 5 Gb (too big for a single-layer DVD disc). Hmmm.... The DivX format I was using should have taken about 977 Mb per hour of source, or less than 2 Gb, which is about where the file started but most certainly not where it ended up. 

Last night, I recorded a 2-hour TV show for my own viewing at a later date. The original capture went fine, 2 hours to convert to an AVI file. Then I tried to edit this video with the Ulead video editing software. All I wanted to do was trim out about 15 seconds of junk at the front of the file and about a minute of junk at the end of the file, and keep everything in between. Took me all of about 2 or 3 minutes to make the edits, and then another *6 hours to save the result!!!!!* To add insult to injury, I ended up with a 2 Gb AVI file (what was originally captured) and an 800 Mb MPG file (what it saved after the edits). Again, I told the software to use the same output format as the input format, so no re-coding should have been needed, so the file should not have taken so long to save, IMHO. Also, the specs on the DivX format I chose say it uses an average of about 977 Mb per hour, so a 2-hour show that fits into 800 Mb sounds like it was compressed to a lower quality standard than what I originally requested or how I told it to save the result. 

Tonight, I tried to record a 2-hour TV show for future home viewing. Once again, the hardware-based encoding went as smooth as silk. But this file has lots of junk that I would like to edit out, like commercials and such, so I again called it into the Ulead editor to work on it. Since this would have lots of snips, I figured I'd use a built-in feature of the software to automatically break up the file into individual clips by the software's best estimate of scene changes (by the changes in the video and audio). It seems like it's making good choices of breaking points, but after 60 minutes of real-time processing, it appears to have processed only 6 minutes of source video, if I am reading the display correctly. At this rate, my 2-hour TV show will need 20 hours just to find the scene breaks, and THEN I can sift through it and throw out the parts I don't want manually. Ugghhhh!!!!!  Oh, and there's a very annoying feature (bug) in this scanning component of the software. While it's scanning for scene breaks, if you touch *any* key on the keyboard, even a SHIFT key, the process stops and all the scene breaks found to that point are discarded. You have to start over at the beginning again.

There seems to be something fundamentally wrong here, or something I simply don't grok. Why on earth would it take 6 hours to trim 1-2 minutes off of a video capture file and re-save it? Is all video editing this slow and tedious?


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## bp936

W0JT, I have a VHSc camcorder, put films on a VHS tape, also wanted to preserve them on DVDs.  I found the easiest way is to buy a VHD to DVD recorder combined in one unit, found one in "MAGNAVOX". I fix the problems first on the VHS, it is a lot faster. 
The only problem I found, I forget the order, in which the buttons have to be pushed to record, so I screwed up several DVDs. I follow instructions from the book but still seem to do it wrong. But when I do it correct, the family photos turned out beautiful. :up: You just put the VHS in, open the DVD tray, press dubbing on the remote, the tray closes and push -play- on the Vcr section of the unit. At the end it does asks, if I want to "finalize" DVD and that's where I am still not clear, in what order to do what. But until now, most tapes are on DVD and YES, it does take a lot of time to record. I just put a tape for dubbing in and walk away. When I come home from work, I finalize the DVD.
I tested the dvd on a stanalone player, on a 7inch player, on 2 XP computers, and it works.:up:

Maybe this will help you. But you have to search for a VHS - DVD player, it has to say, DVD recoring, not just playing. It took me many weeks to find one in a very large very well known W.. store. But luckily it was only $149,-- Canadian$$.


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## W0JT

Thanks, bp936, for the tip on the VHA/DVR combo unit. That would solve part of the problem :up: , but then there's those 8mm analog camcorder tapes, and the occasional program right off the cable TV tuner... :down:

I apologize for the long, rambling nature of my post,  but there _were_ some specific questions way down at the end of the message, for those who persevered to the bitter end of the message. 

The essential question was, is it "normal", when using a video editor program to try to trim off a couple of minutes from the ends of a (for example, 2 hour long) capture file, for the whole file to be re-encoded at the save step? I'm _not_ surprised that re-encoding the whole file takes many hours, just that it seems to be impossible to cut out part of a video file without the tedious re-encoding process being required.


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## wolfworx

I've commented on this problem before but a recent incident prompted this message.

I burned two DVDs for a friend and tested them on my $35 DVD player. They ran perfectly, so I sent them on to her.

Both disks were the same brand (Sony DVD+R 4.7 GB). After getting them, she informed me that Disk #1 was not recognized by her machine, Although the second one ran fine.

I told her to try to play disk #1 on the DVD drive in her computer. It was read there without a problem.

Then I told her to copy disk #1 to a new, blank DVD --- She has two DVD drive in her computer, so this process is easy enough (although it takes about 90 minutes).

The resulting copy was read on her DVD player!

BTW, the original DVD still works on my player, but not hers.

Some thoughts on this matter:


When you burn a movie DVD of say last months poolside party or the new baby and send them to Aunt Martha, Although you tested them on your DVD player, you cannot be sure it will work on hers.

Copying a problem DVD may solve the problem.

Cheaper DVD players are often more forgiving of home made DVDs than more expensive ones. Try out some of your home burned DVDs on a new model DVD player before buying it.


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## helpme80

Hi all, 

New to this, In any result a couple of years ago I went out and purchased all of the equipment that I would need to burn dvds from my dv camcorder. Well after money spent and non-use I have recently attempted to complete these projects. In any result. I am using Nero 6. I have captured my video and edited it, finished the entire thing, however for some reason when i attempt to burn it, it says that the setting are wrong or something. I will appreciate any help that I can get. I am attempting to make a memoir video for my grandmother that recently passed. Please help. 
Thanks.


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## wolfworx

To HelpMe80:

What is the format of your edited movie? MPG?

I assume the movie is running properly on your computer.

If you are using Nero 6

Make sure you are set for DVD burning
Select the Star (favorites)
Select "Make your own DVD Video"
Add your video files to the project
Next
You can preview your movie at this point
If you don't want to make any furthe changes or menuing to your project. Insert a blank 
DVD (if you have not done so) and "Next" to "Burn Options" screen and Burn the DVD.
If you have tried this procedure and failed, where do you get an error?


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## helpme80

Well it is saved under nvc? I believe... it is not under mpeg. Yes the movie was running properly on my computer, it just won't burn, I don't understand why it won't, everytime it just says that there is formatting problems then it won't burn. Is there a different way that I should saving th completed film/file?
Thanks, 
Janine


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## helpme80

Ok, well I tried this all again for like the 1000th time. The file is .nvc, I was under the impression that nero 6 automatically converts the files for me. I am confused.When completing the burning process it says the following:

sorry, your compilation cannot be written on this kind of disc. Please insert a disc of the correct type or modify the settings ofyour compilation to make them compatible with the current disc.

Note: You will not need to transcode again if you cancel the recording now, unlessyou change the project data afterwards.

I am using TDX DVD-R 1-16x 4.7gb DVD.... 

What am I doing wrong? thanks for the help.

Thanks, 
Janine


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## wolfworx

Two thoughts:

Could your Drive be something other than a DVD burner? i.e. a CD RW or a DVD read only.
Is it for DVD +R or -R or +/-R. You might try a different blank DVD/


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## ConsumingHatred

I was wondering if it was at all possible to make a DVD with MPEG-1 videos, they are by far much more compressed and to my knowledge my DVD player does play VCD. So, could I make a DVD with MPEG-1 compressed videos and still be able to make the menu and what not?


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## jwaion

Hi all
Its becoming common to have the little video cameras which captures videos on Mpeg4. I for one have many video Mpeg4 clips which i burn to DVD using Nero vision. Nero vision is a simple editing software which creates Home made DVD from selected video files. BUT, I have one problem. How to grab the file dates of the mpeg4 to appear on each video clip so that when we watch the home burned DVD video, we can see what date the video clip was filmed. Any Advise from this forum would be very very much appreciated.


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## rfjohn13

GREAT Tagline.
bob


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## UFO

Mulderator said:


> I wanted to update this thread because there is finally a product that does a good job encoding to MPEG--an external hardware encoder so this is *the product/method I would recommend*:
> 
> http://www.adstech.com/products/USBAV702/intro/usb702intro.asp?pid=USBAV702
> 
> With the above, you can encode MPEG in real time directly from a VCR or camcorder to the hard drive. With that, you *eliminate Step 2 in my guide* (encoding to MPEG):
> 
> If you have a digital camcorder, this is the same product with a firewire port:
> 
> http://www.adstech.com/products/USBAV_703/intro/usb703intro.asp?pid=USBAV703


 
I just started scouring this thread today after several months of wrestling with a Vaio MCE (RA930G) with its "Click to DVD" and Windows Movie Maker and DVGate or whatever, and having it flatly refuse to recognize my VCR when plugged into either the front or rear RCA jacks. The Vaio's video card is a GeForce 6600, for what that's worth and the VCR is a standard, Joe-average VHS Hi-Fi relic, also made by Sony.

I read the posts by Mulder recommending an external USB interface and have a couple of questions.

- First, is it _likely_ that getting one of these will allow me to bypass this Sony-engineered software nightmare so I can finally get these VHS tapes burned onto my HD? 
- Secondly, since you recommended this ADS box in posts dated roughly two years ago, will this new ADS model do essentially the same thing? Link:

http://www.amazon.com/ADS-USBAV-709-EF-DVD-Xpress-DX2/dp/B000EW62NI/

The reviewers say it has better editing software too - have you heard any professional reviews of this unit? A lot of the video will be clips of local bands, family video, etc. that will require a lot of cutting and pasting - do you do this after getting it encoded to files on your HD, or do you do it on-the-fly? Will the included Video Studio 9 handle this kind of stuff (fade-ins & outs, etc.,) or if not, what would you recommend for editing?

Assuming the interface gets straightened out and I can actually capture, I remember your post saying it's best to encode directly to MPEG2 or 4(?) so as to be in the ideal format...? (I'm pretty much illiterate at digital video.) Is this ADS box likely to give me the best convergence of video quality and ease of use?

An avalanche of questions...sorry - but I keep returning to this dead-end problem every few months and am as confused as when I started in '05.

I bought the Vaio late that year primarily for its being loaded up for multimedia ('more like maxed-out - I picked a remanufactured unit with max RAM, respectable audio & video cards, etc.,) but can't get it to do something as mind-numbingly basic as digitizing videotapes. I considered making it into a boat anchor, then realized I don't have a boat and anchors aren't fetching much on Ebay...

Arrrrggh.


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## baobeiyang

I'm desperately in need of help and I'm terribly sorry for the length of my message-- I can't make it clear without giving you the background info so please bear with me and help me  

I bought a Toshiba Satellite M105-S3041 laptop last Aug. and it came with WinDVD Creator 2. At first it worked well, allowing me to create several DVDs for my friends. Then I started to have all sorts of problems with it. Right now my urgent problem is regarding the project files. I read this thread from the very beginning but I couldn't find an answer so I'm writing to seek any advice or help.

I started with the Capture function, using a firewire cable to transfer clips of vedio from my mini dv camcorder to the harddrive of the laptop. The clips were then saved as .wcp files (i.e., WinDVD Creator Projects) under a folder titled "WINDVD" I created in My Document/My Video. The way I named each of them is something like "032106 birthday party" with the numbers standing for mmddyy. Then I could just click on any of these projects to open the WinDVD Creator and the particular clip would be shown and I could go on to do the edition. 

I haven't been using the WinDVD Creator for quite a while. A couple of days ago I wanted to organize the old projects (the clips that I uploaded before) by renaming them into yymmdd instead of mmddyy. Also, a little earlier than that, I downloaded RealPlayer to my laptop and I don't know if that automatically changed certain configuration of my laptop in terms of media playing. To my surprise, I was not able to open any of the renamed project on the WinDVD Creator. So I changed the name format back to mmddyy. But then if the project was completely new (never worked with after uploading) I would get the following Warning message, saying, 

Warning Message: File not found
C:\Documents and Settings\My Documents\My Videos\AV02032007_195850.mpg

Remove or Browse For Files

If the project was one that I had edited before, I would firstly see the warning message, not just for .mpg but also for .wma (music that I imported before), then eventually the project would be opened, but I noticed that it contained only still images (.jpg) I imported and edited into the project while missing all video parts and some music parts. 

So, my question is, can anyone on this list help me to savage these project files? These are the only copies of the video clips that I uploaded and I have reused the mini dv tape in my camcorder so no original videos are available for me to re-upload! Do you know if these project files can be converted to some other format and be edited again, or be encoded, as Mulder suggested in his article? or they are simply dead? 

One more thing I noticed is that a short clip that I captured from my camcorder to the WinDVD Creator that day just before I renamed all the old project files was saved by the computer in a different way-- directly as a Movie Clip that can be viewed by either the RealPlayer or Windows Media Player or can be imported into the WinDVD Creator and to be edited there. This seems to be different from my last year's experience of capturing video to computer (i.e. the clip was saved as .wcp, not directly as a movie clip). Anyone know why?

I really don't want to lose those precious video memories imbedded in those project files. So any help or advice from any one of you would be greatly appreciated!!!

Thank you,
Baobeiyang


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## 2000wolf

Good job Mulder ,you are so helpful .


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## addme

I have download one , it works pretty good .
Thank you .


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## hilton1234

hello, i couldn't find anything just by looking so i thought id write in for some help.

i have some films on my pc that i want to put on dvds (yes i have dvd RW etc), i have converted it from avi to mpeg dvd (not LCD) but i can choose between NTSC DVD & PAL DVD ?? not sure there but i chose one 2 see if it would work..

ok i did that anyways and then i converted that to DVD and it went from one file to a folder with 2 folders in, one audio and one video, is that right?

lol I have ended up wasting so many of my dvds i thought id try and get some help.

cheers tom hilton


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## W0JT

NTSC is the video standard used in the US, PAL is the video standard used in Europe. (Sorry, I can't be more specific than this, but if you are in the US, you almost certainly want NTSC).

It sounds like you are progressing in the right direction. A video clip to be watched on a PC is typically a single file, such as *.avi, *.wmv, *.mpg, *.mpeg, etc. However, the standard format for your typical stand-alone DVD player is very much more complicated. As you saw, at least a AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS folder, and in the video folder, numerous files with obscure names like VIDEO_TS.BUP, VIDEO_TS.IFO, VTS_01_0.BUP, VTS_01_0.IFO, VTS_01_0.VOB, etc. If that's the sort of output you have seen from your conversion program, it sounds like it is indeed preparing the files for burning in DVD Video format. (Just look at a commercial movie DVD in your PC's DVD player with Windows Explorer. You'll see the same sort of collection of files.)

So, have you tried burning the results onto a recordable DVD disc and seeing if the disc can be played in a DVD player? Remember, the VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS folders MUST be at the top directory level. In other words, you can't make, for example, two folders called Movie-1 and Movie-2, and copy the *_TS folders as sub-folders of those to put two separate projects onto the same blank disc.

Other issues to deal with at this point in the process:
1) What is the size of all the files in the two *_TS folders combined? This will tell you
if you can fit the result onto a single-layer 4.7 Gb DVD, or need to use a dual-layer
9.4 Gb disc.
2) Some stand-alone players are fussier than others about what brand and type of
recordable disc you use for your blank. I believe that in general, DVD-R is more
likely to work in a stand-alone DVD player than DVD+R, but sometimes even two
different brands of DVD-R disc will behave differently in a particular player.
3) Some stand-alone players are much more forgiving, and some can even read the
native single-file formats in addition to the highly structured DVD movie format. So
a disc that plays in one of those players may not be readable anywhere else except
on a computer.

I hope that helps.


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## hilton1234

W0JT said:


> So, have you tried burning the results onto a recordable DVD disc and seeing if the disc can be played in a DVD player? Remember, the VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS folders MUST be at the top directory level. In other words, you can't make, for example, two folders called Movie-1 and Movie-2, and copy the *_TS folders as sub-folders of those to put two separate projects onto the same blank disc.
> I hope that helps.


hello, thanks for help so far.

ok i have tried to burn my files to a DVD and i get the following: no disk in my dvd player, and on my PC dvd player: ASPI for Windows not available! Only 32-bit CD-ROM driver supported. Please make sure 32-bit CD-ROM driver installed. and in WMP: "Windows Media Player cannot play DVD video. You might need to adjust your Windows display settings. Open display settings in Control Panel, and then try lowering your screen resolution and color quality settings." ??? anyways i thought id try to lower my resolution just in case but it didn't help.

do you think it could be file that i am starting with? i have recorded other normal data cds with my drive and they all worked fine, have i not installed my drive properly?

i am using "WinAVI Video Converter Full Edition" to convert and then "Burn4Free CD and DVD" to burn

thanks, tom hilton

ok i have tried again and converted my mpeg to avi then avi to dvd using winavi. i then burnt it using burn4free. i tried it on my tv and it didnt work, on my pc it reconises that it is a dvd but cannot play it...


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## byanoseau

Hi Mulder,
I want to transfer VHS tapes to my computer but I want them in .avi format before I transfer them to DVD. Is the ADS Box still the way to go to do this?
Thanks.
Byn


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## addme

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Share : how to rip DVD and convert Video to iPod

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## addy999

Well nicejob multer you have covered almost everything of this topic ...


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## addme

Have you try them ?

Share : how to rip DVD and convert Video to iPod 

Share ：how to convert dvd and video to iphone 

Share ：how to convert dvd and video to zune


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## paddlepop

sorry but i am so new at this i dont know if i am explaining myself properly! 
I mistakenly saved a project in MM2 to "best playback for my computer" and then burnt it to a DVD using Sonic Now! But when i put that DVD into a stand alone DVD player it wont work. So i did dome reading up and i realised i was supposed to save the project to dv-AVI first, THEN burn it to a DVD so then I can watch it through a DVD player. 
I guess what i am struggling with is that i cant seem to get the original saved movie(which is a .mva file on my hard drive) into an .avi file so i can then re burn it and start again.
does that make sense? 
I dont have any of the project files anymore so i cant just redo the movie and save it the way it should have been done in the first place..... 
PS i have realised that i have done all my home movies this way and now they have all been erased from my hard drive and are now on DVDs in the same .mva format.....


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## DaChew

I never have liked the cucusoftware, they spam it so much all over the internet and it's not that good for the price. 

Helped a friend with this home movie problem, we were using an older jvc dv cam, it was a totally headache until we got a texas instruments firewire card, he just uses MM2.1 to capture to the hard drive as avi that's compressed for best fit?, then nero vision or dvdflick to convert to dvd compilation, nero burning rom to burn then after he checks the conversion, imgburn is a good free alternative to nero.


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## Magikthise

rubeckf said:


> I'm also a real newbie on this stuff and not sure if my problem is related to this or something else. I posted a separate thread last eve but have gotten no comments. I can copy a DVD on my computer with my plextor DVD/CD copier but then it won't play on my VCR/DVD player recorder on the tv which is a toshiba. I can copy one on that off TV, like a concert or something and it won't copy or play on my computer. They both say they use the same type DVD's and what I used for both is DVD-R DVD's. I also want to copy some of my old movies from VCR to DVD. Is there something special I need to do to get them to play? I haven't tried that yet. Then after they are on DVD I would like to copy some of them on my DVD copier on my computer. I use Roxio Easy CD/DVD creator 6 platinum. Thanks for any help with my problems.


Hiya!

I'm using Roxio EMC as well (just not the Platinum edition) so maybe I can help.

Is the video recorded from your plextor the proper format for playing on the toshiba? It has be recorded in the MPEG-2 format to play on most consumer DVD players. I'm not sure why the video you copy off the tv won't play on your computer, unless you don't have the proper video CODECS installed on your computer.

As for copying your movies from VCR to DVD I'd be tempted to do it the 'long way' to ensure a clean copy:

Connect your VCR to your computer using patch cord cables (I know Circuit City/Radio Shack sells cables with an RCA jack for the VCR on one end and a mini-plug for the computer on the other end), record the movie from the VCR to your computer (you should be able to use the 'Capture' feature in EMC for this) and use DVD Builder or VideoWave to burn them to a DVD. Just make sure you've got LOTS of room on your hard drive, 'cause we all know video takes up mucho space. And keep in mind newer VHS tapes may have some kind of anti-piracy 'bugs' (not really bugs, but I don't know what else to call them) hidden on the tape.

I create railroad videos using EMC and although I've got two hard drives on my computer (80gb and 200gb) I ended up getting an external 500gb just for my video editing.

Maybe someone else here can clarify what I've said or correct any mistakes I've made.

Hope this helps.


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## tesuque

i have some questions but it is 2008- does anyone read this? let me know and i will post. thanks, tesuque


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## tesuque

hi. this is so overwhelming but i am glad i am not alone in this. don't know why this is so complicated. i just want to click and save! funny...what a joke.

so, i just will ask about step one. but a firewire card or video card.

i have a sony camcorder. i have downloaded sony softward onto my computer.

i plug my sony cancorder with a sony tape(mini dvd) in it to the usb port and VOILA! the videos from the sony tapes actually appear on the sony software in my computer!

now, i also have panasonic tape(mini dvd) that i use on my sony camcoreer but ALAS, it can not get into my computer when i hook the camcorder with the panasonic tape (mini dvd) in it to the usb port. 

and, if i want to download direct to movie maker, neither tape (mini dvd) will upload from the camcorder to it.

now is it because i do not use a firewire care or a video card?

i read that my camcorder might have one of these. i don't know how to check.

all i know is that one way works. but i want and need to download the panasonic tapes to my computer.

advice?

myriad of questions, but i will do this question by question, step by step.

thanks tech guys! tesuque


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## DrRonski

If you are running W XP, your OS will recognize your camera as soon as you plug it into the USB port. It has nothing to do with your computer's video card. Windows Movie Maker will show you what's on your camera tape, allow you to play it, download it etc. regardless of what brand of tape is in the camera. Once you download the tape to your hard drive you can use W MM to make a movie that will play on your computer or you can burn to a DVD and play on your DVD player.
The Sony software is an alternate way of downloading the camera tape to your computer. You don't need it. Windows can see your camera as soon as you connect it without the Sony software.


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## DaChew

many cams only support jpeg over usb and require firewire for dv

check your manual

usb is notorious for dropped frames as it's shared system resource where the cpu is doing all the work, firewire has the chipset handle the transfer freeing the cpu to handle any compression


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## xpditer

Hi,
My 1st post. How does one checkout, " You can skip all the detail here and go directly to "Quick Recap" if you are adventurous!", mentioned by Mulderator on this topic's first page?
Glad to be here. Will try to be helpful always.


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## 418168

My DVD burner is not recognizing blank discs?


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## lovelornpoet2878

Okay, Mulder! how can I burn a region 2 dvd to make it a region free dvd? I tried changing it while I was burning it...I wasted about 20 blank dvds trying. I posted a tread, but I've had this dvd for 3 months now and can only watch it on my computer....I can't relax on my couch and watch it, I can't take it to a friends house and watch it. I'm growing very impatient with it. And if they would of had a region dvd that would work on my dvd player I would have gotten it, but they don't. The only dvd for that movie is region 2, which sucks! Do you know if it's possible to copy it into a different region?


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## ~Candy~

I closed your thread. Please review the forum rules and next time, buy a DVD for your appropriate region.


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## lovelornpoet2878

The dvd isn't copy right protected and next time I'll buy a dvd for my appropriate region.....If they have one for the movie that took me 8 years to find. It's not a popular movie and was filmed in Australia, and it was shipped from Australia to me. There is no copy of it that is region1, region3, or region free cause it never made it that far. Some movies don't make the front page all the time. Why do you think it took me 8 years to find it! close my tread, I don't like this website anyways, too many people that take action before asking questions. Thank You For Your Help by the way. Virginia M. Wilson at [email protected]


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## DaChew

region free dvd players and pal capable dvd/tv's are not against the law here in the USA

Interesting enough in OZ region restrictions from the MPAA are not supported by law there


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## nycmoonstar

Personally for video capturing on a computer from a camcorder or old VHS tape, I like using Firewire or USB Pinnacle's video capture device (Dazzle Creator Plus for composite and S video input) with its accompanying soft, Pinnacle Studio (for recording, video editing and MPEG/AVI encoding). The only thing is that Pinnacle Studio is huge. But it allows me to add a lot of stuff including voice-overs, subs, and video effects.

When my end goal is to burn a standard DVD disk for playback on a stand-alone DVD player, I either 
1) capture to my computer first, encode a MPEG 2 file after editing on Pinnacle Studio and use Roxio to burn a disk. OR...
2) I just hook up my device to a DVD recorder via DV, composite, or S video, and record directly onto blank disks (though of course I cannot edit the movie.)

For videos that I shot on my camera, I can just transfer the saved vidoe files from my camera to my computer's hard drive first, then load them onto either Pinnacle Studio or TMPG Enc 4.0 (that just happens to handle .MOV input well) for editing and MPEG2 encoding. If I want to watch the videos on TV, I then burn a blank disk with Roxio.


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## nycmoonstar

DrRonski said:


> If you are running W XP, your OS will recognize your camera as soon as you plug it into the USB port. It has nothing to do with your computer's video card. Windows Movie Maker will show you what's on your camera tape, allow you to play it, download it etc. regardless of what brand of tape is in the camera. Once you download the tape to your hard drive you can use W MM to make a movie that will play on your computer or you can burn to a DVD and play on your DVD player.
> The Sony software is an alternate way of downloading the camera tape to your computer. You don't need it. Windows can see your camera as soon as you connect it without the Sony software.


I have a question as I don't have much experience with Windows Movie Maker. By downloading, are you saying that footage on a 8mm tape is downloadable as a file through Movie Maker? Or you are talking about video capturing? If the former is the case, Movie Maker rocks!


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