Mini DV to DVDR

[Chelica]

Hello guys,

I am new to the board. I remember visiting the site before and reading up on a few things. Now, I need some assistance.

I have a Canon ZR85. I currently have a few Mini DV tapes that I would like to convert to DVD so that I will be able to play them on a standard DVD player. Now, I am currently using Nero Vision to dump the data onto my computer. I am using DV Type 1 output.

My question is, once I have it dumped onto my Hard Drive, what is the best software to purchase for me to be able to burn it onto a DVD. And from what I understand, the files can be rather large. What is the best software.method to make it somewhat compact and to optimize data space and still maintain good quality?

And since I am dumping it as one big file, what would be a good software to invest in? That way I can chop the video to my liking and see which one will fit on which DVD.

Thank you!

[mats.hogberg]

Transfer DV AVI to computer with WinDV
Encode DV AVI to DVD mpg with TMPGEnc or MainConcept or <fill in any of the mpeg2 encoders available here>
Author mpg as Video DVD using TDA or <fill in any of the DVD authorers available here>

/Mats

[guns1inger]

I would begin by not using Nero for any stage of the process. Honestly, if they didn't keep giving it away, people would have stopped using it several years ago.

Transfer to your PC via firewire as DV avi. You will need enough HDD space to cope with 13GB per hour transferred. WinDV is a small, easy to use application for doing the transfer, and it's free.

If you intend to do any editing (and I would suggest that you will need to, or your will bore your viewers senseless) then you will also need an editing application. If you experience is light and your needs simple, I would suggest Vegas Movie Studio from Sony, or Premiere Elements from Adobe. Both a reasonably priced, and will

transfer your footage
provide editing tools, transitions and basic effects
encode to mpeg 2 for DVD
provide basic authoring tools for DVD creation

You may find that you need little else.

Of course, if you don't believe you need to edit at all, the best solution, for simplicity and quality, is a standalone DVD recorder with a firewire input.

[edDV]

The basics:

Use IEEE-1394 (firewire) to transfer. A good free program is WinDV.
The data is transferred as a data stream (not a file copy). Minimize computer activity during the transfer.
This results in an exact copy of the data on the DV tape to a DV.AVI file (13.5GB/hr).
If you are short disk space, transfer in shorter segments.

Many ways to edit the video, encode the result to MPeg2 and author a DVD.

Some consumer suites that work are:

Adobe Premiere Elements
Sony Vegas Movie Studio
ULead Video Studio


If you prefer a techie approach, VirtualDubMod + Panasonic DV codec can be used to edit. To that you would add an MPeg2 encoder and a DVD authoring program.

[Chelica]

Wow, thanks for all of the replies. I will be experimenting and trying out these different methods to see which suits me better.

Also, since Hard Drive space is always important, is there a downside to going from my MiniDV and straight transfer/convert into Mpeg2 file? I have seen some software that actually can do this right away.

My goal is not to make an entertaining movie, but to transfer out all of these videos from my MiniDV tapes out and into DVD as fast as possible. The only type of edits I want is to cut portions of the video. That way I can click on next and it will forward me to the next batch of scenes.

[mats.hogberg]

If all edits you want to do is cuts, and can live with doing these cuts not frame accurate, then you may as well edit in mpg. TDA can do cuts and author in one go.

/Mats

[jeet49]

You also might want to use vDTS to stamp avi files with date-time stamp before converting them to mpeg2/DVD format. I would recommend stamping initial 5-10 seconds pr clip instead of doing the complete avi file/footage.

Cheers!

[edDV]

Wow, thanks for all of the replies. I will be experimenting and trying out these different methods to see which suits me better.

Also, since Hard Drive space is always important, is there a downside to going from my MiniDV and straight transfer/convert into Mpeg2 file? I have seen some software that actually can do this right away.

My goal is not to make an entertaining movie, but to transfer out all of these videos from my MiniDV tapes out and into DVD as fast as possible. The only type of edits I want is to cut portions of the video. That way I can click on next and it will forward me to the next batch of scenes.

First realize that encoding to MPeg2 will lower quality. Encoding to MPeg2 on the fly will be lower quality still in most cases.

Important DV "masters" should be archived as DV format if they are important to you. These will look much better on future displays.

Normal process would be to transfer the DV material, edit and then encode to MPeg2. Your machine is not fast enough for quality on the fly software encoding. You would need a capture card with hardware encoding or get a larger hard disk for full DV format transfer.

As said above, many DVD authoring packages like TDA or ULead Movie Factory 5 can do basic cuts as part of the authoring process.

[Chelica]

I see. I just placed an order for Sony Vegas Movie Studio. Might as well get into it right now.

Regarding that hardware encoder, are you talking about a capture card or something? I have a Hauppauge (sp) PVR 150 laying around somewhere, is this what you are talking about? Or am I totally off?

[edDV]

I see. I just placed an order for Sony Vegas Movie Studio. Might as well get into it right now.

Regarding that hardware encoder, are you talking about a capture card or something? I have a Hauppauge (sp) PVR 150 laying around somewhere, is this what you are talking about? Or am I totally off?

Yes, the PVR series has hardware MPeg2 encoding. Quality would suffer. I'd only go that way if it is somehow impossible to add hard disk capacity or if picture quality is secondary.

[mats.hogberg]

Going the hardware encoder route is a bad idea. You'd go:
Digital (DV) -> Analog (video) -> Digital (mpg)
Transfering DV to computer, then encoding to mpg is digital -> digital - Obviously a much better way.
If you're tight on HDD space, hard drives are cheap - even external USB. I'm sure you can pick up a 300 GB USB drive for less than $100

/Mats

[gshelley61]

An alternative is to purchase a good quality standalone DVD recorder that has a DV firewire input (most do nowadays). You can encode your DV tapes directly to DVD (MPEG2) in real time, with excellent results.

Record at the highest quality setting (1 hour per single sided DVD) when transferring hand held camcorder footage in order to minimize motion artifacts, and your DVD copy of the MiniDV tapes will look outstanding.

Whatever you do, make sure you keep the original tapes...