Converting DV Tapes to DVD

[ashvar]

Hi,

Here is my story! I have quite a few home movies on DV Tapes. I want to preserve them in DVD. I presume that a recorder with DVLink would be the way to go. I looked at many many DVD Recorders in the below 200 range which offer a DVLink input. There is another feature which I would want. I want to be able to record the DateTime information from the DV tape. A few months back, I got the Philips DVR615 which records this information as sub-titles (cool feature!) but the unit was so complicated to use that after wasting four weeks trying to set it up and create a single DVD, I figured that it was beyond me and I returned it back to the store.

Can anybody suggest any DVD recorded capable of this?

Thanks in advance.

[Frobozz]

I don't know about other brands, but if you want the date/time information recorded by a Pioneer DVD recorder you must connect via S-Video rather than via the DV-link. That may be true for other brands as well.

[bnbhoha]

many people swear buy it, they say composite inputes are better than DV because of the filters. I prefer DV though.

[ashvar]

Thanks for your comments. I always though that DV would be better quality than composite and S Video. That may be a myth though! How much do these differ in audio/video quality?

[rumplestiltskin]

DV Stream (what is recorded on your DV tapes, assuming you're talking about mini-DV) should produce a better quality than analog when compressed down to the mpeg2 of DVD.

However, if you use a DVD recorder you will be at the mercy of the encoder chip quality; there's nothing you will be able to do to improve this. Buy a cheap recorder and you'll get lousy results.

I would therefore suggest that you use your Mac with iMovie and iDVD to produce the DVD (or, at least, the .dmg image file which you may burn multiple times, if you wish). iMovie will permit you to stick a date/time "title" in the corner. iDVD's mpeg2 software encoding is superior to many of the encoder chips in the DVD recorders. It does take some time, however.

That being said, I've heard the Philips recorders have pretty good chips. Certainly check out the DVD Recorders link here and peruse the comments. But don't expect a $100-200 recorder to spare you the artifacts.