which burner what software

[unstuck2]

Hi,
I'm sure this has been asked a million times before, but I can't find a thread. Please give a response here or point me to the right thread/guide:

I want to put a new PC together to copy our home movies onto DVDs to play on set top DVD players.
Besides getting ieee1394 input, what else do i need?

Is a pioneer DVD-RW sufficient, or do I need the $300 Sony +/- one?

Also, what software do I need for authoring and burning. Do the drives come appropraitely bundled?

Fianally, I might want to copy the occasional commercial DVD, what software is needed for that?

It's starting to look intimidating!
thanks for the help

[Vejita-sama]

The drive really doesn't matter. They are all good. I personally have the Pioneer DVR-A05 (Cendyne) as do many others because of it's low price ($180 after rebates).

As for software. It really depends on what you want to do. If you just want to capture home VHS tapes to HD, and burn to DVD (no menus, effects, transitions, etc). You can easily do this with almost any program (and several freeware ones). In fact if this is your only goal capturing directly to MPGE2 is a good choice as it's easier and saves time/steps/confusion (neoDVD seems to be popular for this).

If you want to get into home editing... the list of software is endless. I use adobe photoshop, ulead video studio, and dvd maestro for most projects. But everyone has their own favorite.

For backing up discs you own see the "DVD Rip" guides to the left. Basically you'll need: DVD Decrypter, IFOedit, and a transcoder (DVD2one, DVDShrink) or re-encoder (Instant Copy, TMPGenc, CCE).

[unstuck2]

thanks.
The drive choice is the first step. So all this DVD- or DVD+ isn't really an issue?

You are right, my aim is to capture home movies shot with a digital camcorder and get them off the tape and onto DVDs, those DVDs I'd like to be able tp play on (almost) any set top player. Menus and editing would be great, but my goal is simply to trim off most of the not so interesting hours of tapes and put together something watchable. Transition effects, background music, etc I can't see myself getting into.

And yes, backup the occasional DVD. I'd just like to make sure that the burner I buy does not become the limiting factor in anything I might get into later.

Finally, it took me a long time to get into CD burners and once I did I really kicked myself not having done it sooner, I am hoping to choose a DVD burner which will allow me to backup my data files easily onto one disk, and have the disk be compaitabily with other DVDRoms incase I need to recover any files.
Does this further information change anything in your reply?
Thanks for the discussion, a $180 Pioneer sure sounds better than the $330 Sony!!! But I'd rather spend the $330 than end up 6 months from now repalcing a $180 pioneer[/b]