Newbie wanting to put home movies on DVD

[cowchpotato]

Ok, I admit, I"ve never done this before. I have a bunch of home movies, and a TV Tuner on my computer. I would like to put these movies on DVD's. I am able to record the movies onto my computer, but from there on is a blurr. I have some DVD-R's and a OPTORITE CD-RW CW5202 drive. If possible, I would like to create a menu for this too. Is my drive capable of writing to a DVD-R Can I put these on DVD, that a regular DVD play will play Can I put a menu on this, to go to different movies, without having to search If so, how would I go about doing this Your help is much appreciated.

[FOO]

You will have to purchase a DVD burner to write DVDs.
You can put 45 - 60 minutes of video with crude menus on
a CD in the form of an SVCD.
There are several guides on how to do this in the Guides section.
Try DVD2SVCD

[ZippyP.]

I have some DVD-R's and a OPTORITE CD-RW CW5202 drive.

DVD's won't work very well in a CD drive.

[housepig]

while you're waiting for that dvd burner, take a look at the "How To" section, specifically the Capture, Convert and Author sections.

you will find a bunch of guides, many tailored to specific software, that can explain the processes involved. at basic, it's a 3 to 4 step process:

1. capture - get the video from your source to a digital form on your computer

2. convert / encode - change from the capture format to dvd format (if you can capture direct to dvd format [mpeg-2] with your capture device and software, you can skip this step)

3. author - prepare menus, convert to burn-ready files (IFO, VOB, etc.)

4. burn - record the authored files onto a recordable disc.

once you have read some of the guides and have some specific questions, come on back and we can help you out in a more direct fashion.