Hello and a question. Compress, and burn?

First off, Hello there! I'm new to all of this, a friend needed some help with video editing he's doing on a volunteer basis and I decided to try my hand. I'm usually pretty quick at picking things up, so hopefully I'll get the hang of this.

Let me describe what I'm doing - My friend is recording lectures and putting them on his Mac. He usually does everything in iMovie. He compresses them, puts them in files and burns them to DVDs which later get copied and distributed.

I have a PC, and an external hardrive (formatted to accept both windows and mac files). I'll be taking some of the files and doing the same thing. I've never done this before, so I'm looking for software suggestions to compress, and burn (and possibly convert?). Free would be good, but cheap might be doable too. Also, if you have any basic tutorials, pointing me in that direction would be helpful too.

Thanks in advance!

Need more info to get you help. He's recoding the lectures with what? What format (video AND audio) are the files that he records?

Will you take his files and compress and burn again?
Or do you mean that you will record lectures and want to compress and burn them to a dvd?

Sorry for the delayed response, I was trying to figure out more information for you guys. The files are video and audio. I'm not sure what format they were in, but we got them onto my computer and they're currently .mpg. He recorded it on a video camera. They are not compressed yet, I would like to now compress them and burn them to DVD. I have Win7, so I have MovieMaker, but I'm not sure if this is the best option.

I hope this is helpful.

Ok you should do a little more reading. IN the authoring forums there are what are called "stickies" that have the basic information every beginner should start with (they are the first threads in each forum).

My best suggestion would be to download avstodvd (freeware) and imgburn (also freeware). Avstodvd will be used to author (create) the dvd and imgburn will be used to burn the disc. Use quality blank discs like verbatim (not the life series) or taiyo yuden (available online).

Chances are you might already have the videos in dvd format (mpeg 2) depending on what type of camera was used. If not avstodvd can do the conversion for you. In avstodvd it will convert to the proper format and you can also create a menu (as simple or complex as you want). Then you will get a video_ts folder that contains the proper layout for a dvd. Than you burn that to disc with imgburn.

How long it takes depends on the complexity of the menu, the length of the video, and the horsepower of your computer.

Good luck and post back with more questions as you get them.

Thanks! I needed a good place to start, and that sounds very helpful. I'll check out the stickies.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by xTroublex

Thanks! I needed a good place to start, and that sounds very helpful. I'll check out the stickies.

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You're welcome.

Forgot to mention this but on the left hand of your screen are the "how to" guides. Start here:

https://www.videohelp.com/author

:)

Edit - not sure just how into video you are but just to clarify "convert" means to change the format(internal guts - ie codec) of a video and "author" means to prepare the video for a certain structure like making a dvd, avchd or bluray disc. - the preparation doesn't change the video it just aligns it into files and folders that are needed for a given disc playback device.

I'm not into it at all, this is brand new to me and they only reason I'm doing it is to help some people out. We record lectures and make DVDs all on a volunteer basis and they need help. Thanks for the clarification, I assumed something of the sort but that helps.

ETA- Nevermind, I think I found it.