windows movie maker and DV capture help please

[voodoochili]

Hi guys,

I' just got my first copy of XP pro installed and have been using windows movie maker2 to capture, seems to work nicely, but grabs it in AVI format which doesnt seem to burn directly to dvd DISK. so in the settings there are alot of options. the ones i;m trying to figure out are dv-avi, which is native, then avi ntsc etc.. can anyone tell me the esiest way to just capture from a minidv cam, i have a firewire by the way, then burn itto a dvd disk that will play in most dvd stand alone machines. thanks for the help. I'm losing my mind here trying to figure this out LOL

[guns1inger]

You cant do it all with Movie Maker (1 or 2). MM will transfer the DV footage from your tape to your PC, and store it in an avi file. If you do a DV transfer, you should get an exact copy of the DV data from the tape. You then need to convert the avi file to DVD compliant mpeg-2, convert the audio to DVD compliant audio, author the DVD, and burn it to disc.

Start by reading some of the guides here, including this one

https://www.videohelp.com/guides.php?guideid=601&howtoselect=4;10#601

https://www.videohelp.com/guides.php?guideid=655&howtoselect=4;10#655

Once comfortable with some of this, move on the DVD authoring guides so you can create menus etc.

[thecoalman]

Make your life a lot easier and get some decent software. Ulead Movie Factory or Ulead Video Studio will both do the capture to burn process. Pretty easy to use.

The guides gunslinger mentioned are a good start too. There's 4 basic steps.

1. Capture your video to AVI, with DV it's a lossless capture. Your only real choice is DV-1 or DV-2. Choose DV-1, the only time you need to choose DV-2 is if your editor doesn't support DV-1. They are both the same in quality, the only difference is how it stores the audio track.

2. Edit your captured AVI. At this point you trim and cut out scenes you don't want. Add transitions between scenes etc. This step can be skipped if you wish.

3. Convert it to DVD compliant MPG so you can author it to disc. This step can be skipped if you convert it during the authoring step.

4. Author your disc. Add chapters, menus etc. If you only want to put the video on disc without all the chapters and menus you can use it as a first play video. At this point you burn it to disc, if you skipped step 3 it will have to be converted to DVD compliant MPG.

The apps I mentioned above will run through this entire process fairly easy using predefined templates.

DV-AVI is the type of video that a digital cam produces. NTSC refers to the type TV standard where you live. NTSC for the U.S. and PAL for most of the rest of the world. If you live in the U.S. always choose NTSC. Look in the glossary to the left for some better definitions. Just about any question you have can be answered to the left.


The fastest way to get it on DVD would be to use steps 1 and step 4. Capture it, make it a first play video. Then burn it to disc, it will take a while because it has to be converted to DVD compliant mpg before it's actually burned to disc. Just like anything else it's a learning curve, get yourself some RW's that you can keep burning too and start experimenting.

[mikesbytes]

I never trusted MM to transfer my video, simply because it didn't tell me if it dropped any frames. If it is just the transfer you are worried about, then try WinDV

[State Of Mind]

Use WinDV. Any media stuff done by Microsoft SUCKS.