Looking for some good freeware.

[patrickmerrill]

Hello,

I've always used the only DVD-burning software available to me: Sonic MyDVD; but the software has crashed on me and I'm not convinced I'm getting the same quality I could have been getting.

I generally capture the video from my DV camcorder through Windows Movie Maker ( ), which could be causing problems. (I then usually use TMPGEnc to convert the DV-AVI files to MPEG-1 if necessary). Today I downloaded (but have not tried yet) STOIK Capturer, which captures to DV-AVI.

I would also like to point out that I have spent a long time working on my movies (rotoscoping and whatnot) and I don't want to spend the same amount of time learning about DVD Authoring - so with this and the above information in mind, is there perhaps a free, user-friendly-ish, DVD burning software that, for the most part, keeps the quality of the original DV footage intact?

Thank you very much,

Patrick Merrill

[Nelson37]

Unless it is re-encoding, which should only happen if the file is somehow non-standard, any authoring software should have NO EFFECT WHATSOEVER on the quality of your video. This is true for all authoring packages.

I have used Sonic for over a year now. Limited menu creation, but I often avoid menus altogether. One thing I have noticed is that it seems to have some sort of memory leak problem, rebooting after each burn solves this. I reboot between captures anyway so this is no big problem. And it came with my burner for free.

[patrickmerrill]

Thank you kindly for the reply.

Sonic came free with my burner as well.

However, since it has crashed on me, I have not been able to use it. Every time I start the program, I get the error:

Sonic MyDVD has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience.

I have tried reinstalling...perhaps there is something in the registry which needs fixing...any ideas?[/code]

[jimmalenko]

Use TMPGEnc to convert to MPEG-2 (as it is better at Full D1 than MPEG-1), and check out the TMPGEnc guides at www.digitalfaq.com, as well as the couple in the guides section here that deal with "configuring TMPGEnc for high-quality, dvd-compliant MPEG-2" (I think that's what one of the guides is called). http://members.dodo.net.au/~jimmalenko/AVI2DVD.htm might also have some useful tips.

If you just want a quick n dirty author, output to ES with TMPGEnc and use IFOEdit to author. No menus & limited settings = hardly any confusion. Personally I like TMPGEnc DVD AUthor (30 day fully functional free trial), but others here also recommend DVDAuthorGUI and GUI for DVDAuthor (both free). DVD-lab is probably the most complex authoring software, but it rewards a steep learning curve with many more options than all the rest.