Question on capturing...

[chess]

All:

I just have finally finished a tape, and I want to capture, with my sony h32 I got some Ulead program, and i captured it.. I do have vegas and adobe premiere, on my machine. i am curious if there is a good program to capture with and then edit with, or do you suggest one program? Also do you capture to avi ? I want to make a dvd out of it with menus etc..

Thanks!!!

-Ron

[redwudz]

I would never suggest one program, but with multiple programs, you have a sharper leaning curve. However...., get the capturing part done first. If possible capture to DVD compatible format. If AVI, plan on encoding to DVD format. You need to know the specs of the DVD format to know how to proceed.

It looks like you have the programs to do what you want, but unfortunately, you need to learn each one to use them properly.

First capture, possibly edit, then encode to DVD format, then author, finally burn. Authoring is where you add chapters and menus.

[guns1inger]

DV is a effectively a file transfer. You are tranfering the DV data from the tape in your camera to your PC and placing it inside an AVI container. (assumes you are using firewire for transfer). Both Vegas and Premiere have facilities to do this. Both, unfortunatelty and incorrectly, refer to the process as capturing. You also have the option of using other tools, including free standalone transfer programs such as DVIO.

Using Vegas as an example (as I use it myself), you can transfer the footage across to the PC (DV requires around 13GB / hour HDD space), drag it to the timeline for editing, cut and change to your haerts content, add credits etc. Once you are done, you have a number of options. You can

Send it back up the wire to your camera to an archive to tape.
Save it out as a DV file on your HDD for encoding later.
Encode it using the built-in version of the MainConcept mpeg encoder.
Frameserve it out to a standalone encoder using the Debugmode frameserver.

Once encoded, you need to author it before you have the files required to burn to DVD.

Each step and all the tools are covered here. There are guides for many of them, and many people who can help. Start slow, ask sensible questions and always search first. Have fun.

[chess]

Well I have the video captured from the video..... easiest program to and an edit with ?

-Ron