Help me find the right solution please.

[abeaty]

I have a digital sony camcorder with years of video to encode and write to DVD or BluRay for distribution to family and friends. I bought licenses to Scenalzer and TMPGEnc some time ago, but never really got into them because of time and complexity. I am quite technically astute, but I am also very time poor with a young family and other hobbies.

I am looking for some software that can help me capture, encode and build appropriate DVD or BluRay discs without me needing to understand the intricacies of the various formats or other complexities. Ideally it would be a couple of clicks, walk away for a few hours, come back to see it all done.

Does such software exist?

Thanks a lot.

[filmboss80]

The good news is that there are free tools to help you. Capture digital video on your computer through a firewire (IEEE 1394) connection (if your computer does not have a firewire port, you can always install a cheap firewire card), using the free WinDV software to capture. (As an option, Windows Movie Maker will do captures; just remember to save the video files as DV-AVI, not WMV.)

You can do simple edits of the DV-AVI files using free tools like Windows Movie Maker or VirtualDub. Just make sure your output remains DV-AVI.

Your finished AVI file can be encoded with DVD Flick and burned to DVD using Imgburn.

Have fun and keep it simple.

[abeaty]

filmboss80,

Thanks a lot for the response. My experience with free software over the years has not been good. While some is quite functional (and some even fully functional), I have found their interfaces to be cumbersome and difficult to work with. In most cases I am OK working through that, but for some reason I don't seem to be OK here.

I am open to using 3 or 4 separate packages, but this smacks of Scenalyzer and TMPGEnc all over again. Plus it forces me to at least understand enough to ensure the hand-offs from one package to the next are seamless.

Is there not one piece of software that I can buy to do it all? I am open to spending some money and would expect with free packages to do it, that the costs might be < $100.

Thanks in advance.

[thomasj]

Hi abeaty, I'm no expert by any definition, but I am doing the much the same right now. I've found a lot of the open source software to be very good, but it varies from package to package. I really fond of AVSToDVD, ImgBurn, and WinDV. They are pretty easy to use. I also use Vegas Movie Studio and Womble DVD Wizard. Movie Studio is somewhat broken compared the the Pro version, but I still like it for my purposes. Maybe also consider a DVD recorder???

[Jim44]

Most of my video hobby stuff is working with MiniDV stuff. I'll echo filmboss80's comments - I use most of what he mentioned (WinDV, VirtualDub, ImgBurn). Out of habit, I use separate encoding and authoring tools (TMPGEnc Plus and dvdauthorgui), but DVDFlick seems pretty popular and well regarded.

Main thing is to find tools and a workflow that works for you. I could probably simplify mine a bit, but I'm familiar with it and it's pretty much "automatic" for me now. In addition to asking here in the forum, have a look in the "Tools" section, and read info on a couple of different tools for a particular task. Try one or two (or more ) to find the one that works for you.

[manono]

My experience with free software over the years has not been good.

In our line of work freeware often beats payware. Yes, you often will have to use several programs where you might wish there was one to do it all, but each of the ones you use was designed to do one thing well, where many of the all-in-one programs don't do anything well, and wind up giving you a mediocre result. Rather than being in such a hurry to go out and spend money, my suggestion is to try some of the names mentioned. Editing your home videos for DVD will take time - there's no way around that. It doesn't have to take money.

[redwudz]

Generally, freeware authors give those programs to everyone without restrictions, mainly because they enjoy the hobby more than the monetary gain. Think about how we would do without programs like VirtualDub and many others. Just once in a while, consider donating a bit to them to encourage them.

[themaxx69]

Talk about good timing. I am trying to convert my minidv vids to dvd, and not having good results.

I used to windows movie maker to get the vids from the tape to computer in the dv-avi format I think. Big files, like 12Gigs an hour. I tried using tmpgenc xpress 4.0 and 2.5, and virtual dub to decompress the audio. Audio/video sync is fine, but the outputed mpg vids don't look nearly as good as the originals on the computer. I tried vbr & cbr ranging from 4000kbs to 9200kbs and the mpg vids still don't look as good, not even close to as smooth. I mean, they look pretty good, but the originals are WAY smoother.

I ran across another forum where someone said minidv converted to dvd should look the same or really really close.

Any help would be great.

Thanks.

[abeaty]

I am still working through this, but I am using WinDV to capture the video and https://www.videohelp.com/tools/WinFF for conversion.

There are lots of options for encodings. I am slowly working through them myself so can't help you much there. There are a few I have tried that seem to result in very good quality.

Please let me know if you find some that work for you. I will report back as I find more information too.