New to DVD recording - need help

[rogershah]

My computer (a Dell 8300) has a NEC 4X DVD recorder (DVD+R/RW), video capture card and Roxio Videowave Movie Creator/Sonic MyDVD LE software. I need to capture video from both analog and digital sources and burn either PAL or NTSC DVDs. I have the following questions (these questions pertain to home DVDs, i.e. no macrovision, no copyrighted material etc.):
1. Given a multisystem VCR (which can read both PAL and NTSC DVDs), can I burn a NTSC DVD if input from VCR is PAL and vice versa?
2. I need to fit no less than 2 hours worth of captured video with stereo
sound on one DVD. What setting should I use in terms of bit rate, sound
quality etc.?
3. Is there a way to append a DVD eg: a disc once burnt with a few video
clips not amounting to the full capacity of the DVD, with additional video
material?
4. To make a copy of a home DVD with conversion from PAL to NTSC and vice versa, do I need software in addition to what I have? The Sonic MyDVD LE can apparently make an exact copy but I did not see a setting that would let me make conversions.
Thank you for your time. I will appreciate any help with these questions.
Roger

[Turtle49]

I'll give this a shot, although I don't know exactly how much I will be able to help.

1. Given a multisystem VCR (which can read both PAL and NTSC DVDs), can I burn a NTSC DVD if input from VCR is PAL and vice versa?

I have converted A PAL (region free) DVD to NTSC using my Initial IDM-830 DVD player connected to my Sony TRV27 DV Camcoder utilizing the analog to Digital pass thru. I used Pinnacle Studio 8 to capture and encode then TMPEnc DVD Author to author the DVD. There are limitaions to this method;
- It converts the audio to 2 channel
- It takes widescreen and makes it letter boxed fullscreen.

And I'm sure there are other limitaions as well. I guess the answer to this one is that it depends on how you capture.

2. I need to fit no less than 2 hours worth of captured video with stereo
sound on one DVD. What setting should I use in terms of bit rate, sound
quality etc.?

Bitrate can be calculated using:
DVDRHELP's bitrate calculator
You will probably be around 4500 - 6000.

3. Is there a way to append a DVD eg: a disc once burnt with a few video
clips not amounting to the full capacity of the DVD, with additional video
material?

Not that I know of. You will have to extract the MPG data and re-author.

4. To make a copy of a home DVD with conversion from PAL to NTSC and vice versa, do I need software in addition to what I have? The Sonic MyDVD LE can apparently make an exact copy but I did not see a setting that would let me make conversions.

As fas as I know there is no direct PAL to NTSC conversion. But there are plenty of tutorials on how to do this.
I would suggest not using MYDVD becuase of the way it encode audio (PCM). This is a very large audio format. MovieFactory 2 or some of the more advanced authoring tools do a better job. Also if I were you I would look into a good capture software, there are many out there. I use Pinnacle but I think if you do a little reading on the site there may be more popular ones.



Hope this helps.