DV-AVI CApturing

[davoud]

HI All,

I am using a Dell dimension 4550, CPU 1.8 GHz, windows xp home, NEC DVD+RW Burner and Sony TRV-19 Camcorder.

I have searched alot of forums and websites and I understand the procedure of capturing a movie and burning it to a dvd.
I need some advice regarding choosing good softwares to capture my movie in DV-AVI, converting it to MPEG-1 and Mpeg-2 as well as a software to burn it to VCD, SVCD or DVD so that I can play it in both a stand alone DVD player and in my computer using Windows Media player. Please advice softwares that can handle a One Hour Movie with no problem.

I have tried Nero ultra 6 to capture and burn but the problem is that I can not play the final movie with Windows Media Player. Since the trial version of the nero has expired, Currently I am gonna use the Trial version of Sony Vegas 4 to capture which I don't think it will handle one hour movie.

I have Windvd recorder(trial version! ) and therefore I have the plug-in for WMP and I can play movies with WMP. I have used TMPGEnc converter and Author too.

Please let me know what your experience is about this whole story of video making. BY the way please do not refer me to this dvdrhelp website I would like to konw about your experience of using different softwares.

[joecav]

I also have a Sony DV camera and one of the tools I use is VirtualVCR. It's free and it's in the TOOLS section. I also have and mostly use Premiere, but, if you are on a budget, you can't beat the price of VVCR.

Once you save your DV movie to your PC it will be a DV-AVI. After you edit your movie you have to then convert that file to an MPEG. There are many different ways you can go here, depending on the final destination media/format(DVD, VCD,etc). I only put my movies on DVD, so I use Premiere to Export the DV-AVI file with the MainConcept encoder to MPEG-2. The from there, depending on what authoring app i am using I fiddle with those files until I am satisfied.

What authoring program do you plan on using?

[davoud]

I am planning to buy Nero Ultra 6. Do you mean Adobe Premier ( $700)?

are the trial version of premier and mainconcept fully functional? How long video you are allowed to capture and encode with them?

How do you rate them? do you get any droped frames while capturing? Do you capture a One hour movie with no problem? what about the quality of the final movie(DVD)?

[phhoth]

Buy Scenalyzer to capture and Mainconcept to encode. You won't regret it a nd save $$$ over the solution you are thinking about.

[indolikaa]

When I .avi...

WinDV to capture,
VirtualDub to frameserve,
TMPGEnc to encode,
DVD-lab to author/burn DVDs and VCDEasy to author/burn (S)VCDs

No complaints here.

[davoud]

Thank you all for the messages. I will appreciate it if I get some more comments.

[State Of Mind]

What indolikaa said.

[Bstansbury]

Just thought I would add my 2 cents. DV transfer by firewire seems to be the easy part. Most good systems and DV Video software can do this without ever dropping a frame. The big job is editing your home videos. While WinDV can split the video a time marks or video splits, this will never get all the clips that you want to cut an drop on the floor. I believe that if you transfer in type 1, which is the only type that VirtualDub will accept, you can edit all the garbage out there. However, what have you done about the sound. I guess the first thing you could do if used Type -2 would be to load both the video and then the audio into Virtualdub and edit them together. You never want to cut one clip any other way or you'll spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to get back to lip sync.

Ulead VideoStudio takes care of all of this internally. Just Transfer the file in type-1, open it, edit it, save the project, add input title frames , stills, Titles, fade-in, fade-out, cross fade, animation to titles, add in a mushic track, then add you own voice to a couple of clips, and finally, save the file as an avi, or burn it directly to VCD,SVCD, DVD, or just to an MPEG file to play directly in Window Media Player. I got my copy free when I purchased my DVD+R burner. At first it was very difficult to learn how to use it, but once you learn, and start checking out the features in a lot of other software, you'll learn to love it.

WinDV and VirtualDub are free but you still need an MPEG encoder. You can get a copy of TMPGen free for 30 days but then what????

Wow...... that was a lot for 2 cents

[Dragonsf]

VirtualDub can only handle Type-2 DV (Video-Audio).With Type-1 you can only use Video.I'm using DVIO for FW filetransfer, AviSynth for editing and CCE for encoding.Any DVD AUthoring program for Authoring and ImgTools for burning.

[davoud]

thanks for you both Bstansbury and dragonsf. I do have the Ulead studio 5 which came free with my firewire and have downloaded all necessary patches but i have a major problem using it. whenever I try to capture after a while i get a message saying Ulead has encountered an errer and needs to shutdown" or something like that and then program closes.

[Bstansbury]

Davoud, I just remembered one more feature that VideoStudio has,(others may have it also,..don't know) that is extremely useful. When you are connected to your camera via firewire, this is a two way communications line. All the "Stop, start, pause, FF, and rewind button", on VideoStudio main capture screne and storyboard will control your camera. You don't need any remote controls or fingers trying to control your camera. I thought this feature was really neat. I do have a remote control for my camera, and I use it from time to time, but the VStudio controls are much easier.

IF you don't have a DVD recorder,... I suggest you find out which ones come with good software and buy that.

Bud

[davoud]

yes, I know that it is a good feature but in general I can not use Ulead and I found Nero Ultra 6 a very good program even though you can not use multisession feature through nero vision express while you are capturing the tape and actually that is a questuion for me if there is any way to do that.

[Bstansbury]

Sorry, can't help with Nero... I only have Ulead VideoStudio 6.02. It is a great program,... all the way down to the final finish. I was amazed the first time I took a file all the way down to the end and it started the DVD Wizard. I had the choice of VCD, SVCD, or DVD format. Then it helps you make automatic "Chapters" so your DVD player can jump to sections of the video or specific scenes. After that it has a built in Burning program that opened up my DVD writer, verified the empty disk and burned it the first time with no problems. It is a complete end to end program.

It was hard to learn at first because the help files are not the best. The new version has a much better "Editing feature" and I don't know what else since I only have the trial version.

I would think there is something in your hardware or software that is killing the capture. I've never had a problem there (knock===)

[jimmyjojo]

I would use Windows Movie Maker 2 to capture. It works fine for me and i don't have any problems with it. Plus... it's free! Just set the capturing setting on DV-AVI, and you're set.