my reason for joining (i.e. - my goal in being here)

[SL1960]

i have a desktop publishing/print graphics and layout background (mac), several years worth, as well as a decade or so doing things in microsoft software on windows machines. that being the case i am not shy about using a pc, however my experience in working with video is nil.

at the moment, i am trying to help my father, who is a preacher, make a leap from videotaping his sunday sermons (which he has til now sent copies of to people around the country) to recording directly to a dvd recorder (a Philips DVDR 75). the dvd recorder is connected to a Sony Hi8 analog camcorder. we have recorded 2 hours from there to the Phillips and had no problem producing a dvd with 2 seperate films on it. from there we had no problem producing videotapes from his already established taping/copy set-up.

the goal is this: ideally he would like to be able to take his original dvd recording and capture the resulting video onto his desktop (a Sony Vaio PCV-RX650 'Digital Studio PC', he has 512 MB ram, a 1.6ghz pentium 4, 55 GB available hard drive space, an internal cd-rw drive, an internal dvd-rom drive; he has also recently purchased a Sony DRX-510UL DVD+/-RW/+/-R/CR-RW external drive) and apply a beginning title page as well as an end title page to each weeks preaching. the salesman at COMPUSA assured him the software delivered with the drive would give him the possibility to capture his video to the hard drive as well as edit it.

and you guys are probably laughing already... hehehe...

this is what i have been able to accomplish with the software delivered:
1 direct copy of his dvd master using Veritas RecordNow DX,
and 1 'image file' (a *.gi Veritas proprietary format apparently...) saved to the hard drive,
and an approximately 19 MB file 'captured' by Sonic MyDVD that i would describe as a 'video thumbnail', that is, a video that plays within MyDVD in a small screen format with shitty quality and no sound. (the purpose of being able to do that escapes me.)

so...from my perspective there are two problems, one is actually getting an editable video onto his hard drive, and the second getting some simple (for my father) editing program that will recognize whatever video format is created.

ArcSoft's ShowBiz editing software was also delivered and appears to be fairly flexible and easy to use (although i cannot really tell because i have no frigging video to edit!), however like the rest of the software he has available for DVD authoring, it is geared to people with mini DV camcorders or people who want to make flashy slide shows from photos.

i spent quite some time (hours) on this site yesterday looking for a way to capture video off of a homemade DVD but saw no solution. if there is one then it is probably because i still do not have all of the jargon in my vocabulary and you have my apologies for posting a question already answered.

i will ask anyway...is there freeware/shareware/any-ware a program that will capture his homemade DVDs? and if so, what kind of recommendations can you give for editing software easy enough for a 61 yr old man who thinks all-of-this-technology-is-really-cool-but-is-constantly-frustrated-by-his-inability-to-use-it-effectively? he has some money available but not a lot (personally i would like to have him buy Premier just because i would like to goof around with it after using Photoshop for years...but i think this is probably overkill and doubt i would be able to get the video off of the original and onto the hard drive just with Premier)

thank you for your support and for even being here.

[Tommyknocker]

If the video is not encrypted, since you made the DVD yourself, it shouldn't be, I would suggest your father use Virtual Dub mod (freeware)to load the VOB files from your DVD onto his computer. He can then either save them as AVIs, or frameserve them to TMPGEnc Plus ($48.00) to be endoced as MPEG file(s).

To make title pages and transitions, etc., I would suggest he take a look at the trial ware version of Ulead's Video Studio 7. Send me an email if he has any questions.