Best software for transferring Digital8 to computer or DVD

[technomoron]

I'm a police officer and have a digital8 camcorder in my patrol car. I recently upgraded my computer and have windows xp, a firewire connection, and a dvd burner.
What i'm interested in doing is routinely transferring the tape (about an hour and a half or one tape a day on average) to my computer and then onto dvd (or cd)
I'm famous for buying software that ends up being so complicated I don't use it or don't use hardly any features that it offers. What I would like is a recommendation on software that is easy to use and reliable. I've read some recommendations on Nero 6 and also on Pinnacle. I don't plan on trying to do anything fancy.
Am I right in assuming that most software will allow the video to be transferred to the hard drive prior to being transferred to DVD? What kind of time-frame should i be expecting for transferring an hour and a half of tape.
With the computer i have and the low cost of dvd's i would prefer doing this than saving the tapes for about 30 days and then recording over them.
As i'm completely new to doing this any advice would be appreciated.

[jdizzy40]

Well copper, the easiest solution would be to use Windows built in Movie Maker. I use it routinely to capture from my camera to hard drive. Since you have fire wire connection, hook your cord up and turn the camera on. XP should pop up your options, select windows movie maker and it will walk you through it. The software, that is starting and stoping the capture controls the camera buttons for you. How long will it take, it will play in real time and capture that way. So and hour of video will take about an hour to capture and about 10 to 12 minutes to do the rest of it's thing before you have a playable file on your harddrive. If you want to burn on the fly, straight to DVD without any authoring, I have and have used the following which supports burning directly to DVD from the camcorder, Roxio EZ CD Creator 6, and WIN DVR. Theres one more but I haven't used it much. Hope that helps you. Oh once you have your file on your hard drive using Windows Movie Maker, I use Sonic My DVD to make a menu etc and use it's built in burning feature to write to DVD/.

[Innershield]

Adobe Premiere

[technomoron]

Thanks for the reply. Just to confirm something, even using the firewire and burning directly to CD that will still transfer at a one to one rate? It made sense to me that the tape would have to be playing to transfer, however I had a salesperson tell me that it burned at an incredibly fast rate using the firewire as opposed to the USB. Another option I have would be to use a high capacity memory stick however i'm sure the video would be small and i'm not even sure that the audio would be decent. Thanks again

[bottle-necked]

transferring the tape (about an hour and a half or one tape a day on average) to my computer and then onto dvd (or cd)

The easiest for me to do that kind of project would be to use Ulead VideoStudio V6 (updated with the current downloads). I don't think that program is available anymore. Ulead has a 30 day demo version that's V7, but it's a little harder for me to use because I haven't did any big projects in it as of yet. It looks about like V6, but the interface has changed a little. The help file tutorial is fairly good and the learning curve is pretty quick with their products. Best of all it's free to try for 30 days. It's available at their website.

With V6 it's easy to hookup your DCam and make the capture. The file will automatically be added to the timeline. After capturing the 1 1/2 hour file you would simply select Make DVD, click yes to a few items then burn the DVD. I'd use RW's if you interested in reusing the disks after a month, and practice on a few short capture and burn processes to get my hand in.

For 1 1/2 hour DVDs you will need about 720x480 @6Mbps VBR or CBR. If you use any higher bitrate you may wind up with files too big for a single DVD. AFter you do a few you will determine the exact Mbps setting you need giving you highest quality.

Most of the programs default setting will be close after you get it locked upon the proper DV capture template and output file type and template.

Good luck.

[jdizzy40]

I think the salesperson got it wrong. Firewire is faster than the old USB but not as fast as USB 2.0. You really can't tell a big difference. Firewire is the standard capture method for most authoring programs. Yes on your question of one to one rate. The tape has to play in real time at normal speed. Your file size would have to be small for memory stick. There are several options (or templates) in Windows Movie Maker to choose from. I can capture in IPAQ Standard and play video on my pocket pc. About 50mb for a 30 minute video file.

[ASB]

Check out NeoDVD from http://www.mediostream.com.
With this you can burn a DVD in real time during capture.
If you do not want to mess with editing etc.. I.e. all you want is a copy, then is might be the easiest and quickest way.

Quote from mediostream web site

"Create a DVD with the "1-Click" neoDIRECT Module

Want to create your DVD or VCD Video without any hassles? With neoDIRECT, you can eliminate another step in the DVD production process. All you need to do is set your preferred options, add files or select live capture, click on the "Make Disc" button, and neoDIRECT takes care of the rest. "

[redwudz]

I use a fairly simple system. I Transfer from the DV source via firewire to the computer using WinDV(free). I like it compared to DVIO because it has a preview screen. I then run the DV file through TMPGEnc Plus to encode to MPG format. I use ES in TMPGEnc and select MP2 audio to save space(you probably don't need to with 1.5 hour video) If you go with the defaults, this will take a few hours(You might want to select noise reduction filter in TMPGEnc because you probably have a noisy video). I do it in the evenings after I've finished other tasks with the computer. Then take the resulting file and run it through TMPGEnc Author. You can burn from this program to DVD and you are done. Both TMPGEnc programs are easy to learn with a lot of options. If you don't need editing, they are the simplist to use. You can get the trial versions and try them out for 30 days to see if this is what you want. Firewire tranfers at 1:1, so it will take the same time as the tape takes to play. USB 2 is supposed to go as fast, but it depends on your setup. Firewire is the best way. There are programs to directly go to MPG from firewire, but computer processing speed is critical and you don't have as much control of the resulting MPG. Try TMPGEnc system first. It works good with noisy, dark videos.

[rsuave5]

as someone up top mentioned the easiest and cheapest is to use moviemaker that comes with win xp. upgrade it to version 2.0 from microsoft.com and youll be amazed at how easy it is to capture,clip,add effects etc. the down side is you have to save the movie as a dv-avi or windows file adding another step to your process (encoding)

if you wish to go straight from camera to dvd then ulead products are cheap,dependable, and easy to use.

movie factory 2 is basically click straight to dvd and it turns your camera on and burns straight to disk. i like adding titles, effects etc so i capture first and edit but you may not need or wnat to. its like 50 bux