Canon ZR300, Firewire Card, Firewire Cable, Nero Burning Sof

[sunilk_14]

Hi There,

I have a Quick Question:

What I have:
Canon ZR300 Camcorder, Firewire Card (Fixed it to my System), Firewire Cable, Ahead Nero CD/DVD Burning Software & a DVD R/W Drive.

Yesterday, when I imported video from my MiniDV Cassette to PC, The 1 Hr cassette is downloaded into my PC as an .AVI file. And the file is about 12 Gigabytes.

When I tried to burn it into DVD (Using Nero, making a movie) it is taking around 12 Hrs to convert it and burn it into a DVD.

Can Anyone suggest me any Software/Hardware, which can save me a lot of time & effort into it.

Actually, I do have 7 Cassettes to be loaded and burn into DVD’s.

Help me Please.

Thanks in Advance.

Sunil Kumar. J

[rumplestiltskin]

Your profile shows a reasonably fast P4 with 768MB of RAM so it's not a hardware issue. I would look for something to import the footage as native DV-Stream rather than what you're using (MovieMaker?) which seems to be wrapping the DV-Stream into an AVI container. The authoring process (encoding part) should take about 4-5 hours.

[hech54]

I use Ulead Movie Factory 2SE (available for about $5 on Ebay) to go from DV to DVD. There are many other softwares that can do the same but that is what works for me.
Either that or I use my DVD Recorder.

[rumplestiltskin]

There's always AVID Free, as well.

Also occuring to me is VSO's DivxToDVD which transcodes from AVI to a VIDEO_TS folder ready for burning. Extremely fast encoding! No menus but, if you really do need a menu, you may import the DVD Video from there to TMPG DVD Author and add the menu structure (and burn).

Frankly, I've found Nero to be a pretty miserable piece of software (but YMMV).

[sunilk_14]

Gentlemen,

Please, Also if possible, Can you please mention, the time it take to convert & Quality of the picture along with the Tools you are mentioning.

Thanks,
Sunil Kumar.

[rumplestiltskin]

On my AthlonXP 2500+, a one hour AVI converts in about 50 minutes using DivxToDVD. Remember, no menus but it's ready to burn (VIDEO_TS folder).

[sunilk_14]

Guyz,

Yesterday, I used DivXDVD to convert my .AVI to MPEG2 files. It Converted Very Fast. But have some problems:

1) The converted picture is of poor quality. (Truthfully, Very.Very.Bad Quality, As if I am watching 19th century movies)
2) in the Picture, whenever there is a Bright light in foreground,
the converted picture shows as black (As if some part was cut from my film).Example:
when I am shooting my car in a broad day light, sunshine is reflected on windshield and onto my camcorder.
This was recorded fine in .AVI file. But After the conversion, when I view the mpeg2 file,
it shows this part of the film as black (Dark as if I am watching photo Negative).

Why am I getting this sort of impressions? (By the way, I downloaded DivXDVD Trial version and tried with it)
Is there any settings I am missing?
Is there any way I could get, good & Fast mpeg2 conversion tool?

All I am looking is a GOOD QUALITY MPEG2 converter.

Help me out.

Please.

[sumibas]

i do this all the time. the software i use is Ulead video studio 8.0 or 9.0. 8.0 converts one hr video in about hr and 20 min. 9.0 takes about 2 hrs but there is a significant diffrence in the quality between 8.0 and 9. if need very good quality with anti-flick then it takes about 4 hrs in 9.00 with 2 pass encoding. this way i am almost getting the same quality as the original video

[julitomg]

How about Avi2Dvd ???...

[aanaravs]

Sunil,
Take a look at some of the DVD Authoring packages out there like TDA or something along those lines. However, if you can, I would reccomend purchasing Adobe Premiere Elements 2.0. It can capture and edit various formats and then create a decent looking DVD.

[lordsmurf]

Avoid the all-in-one crap, for starters.

Import your DV, unaltered, using something free like WinDV.

Then encode it directly to MPEG-2 in an encoder. I suggest Canopus Procoder Express ($50) or maybe TMPGENC PLUS ($30)

If you want to edit, you need to get an editor like Adobe Premiere Elements ($99) and then use a good encoder plugin. I don't know if Elements comes with the standard Adobe MPEG Encoder (MainConcept engine) like the full version of Premiere does. Canopus Procoder Express ($50) is also good, assuming Premiere Elements works with plug-ins.

The first rule is DO NOT BUY ANYTHING. Most software has trials, so try them. Some are fully functional, some are crippled, some insert watermarks. Does not matter right now, just TRY THEM. When something looks good to you, buy it then.

Finally, author the DVD in something. TDA is a good intro packages and it's relatively cheap too ($40).

Also, please don't have a heart attack when somebody suggests you have to buy a few programs. At most I just listed $200 in excellent software that won't give you quality problems. Remember that most intermediate software is about $300 per program. You have a good camera, so don't blow it by using garbage software to make a DVD.

Also note that you must have patience. Video takes time. If you don't want to wait on video, then have it do the encoding overnight, you won't notice it. Whatever you choose to do should take under 7-9 hours while you sleep.

[aanaravs]

Premiere Elements uses the MainConcept engine for creating DVDs, which is quite good IMO. The same engine is used in Premiere Pro.