From DV camcorder to DVD with Nero. helpppp

[kscott0986]

I'm using Nero Vision to capture video from a miniDV camcorder, then hopefully split the captured video into multiple files and then burn them onto a DVD.

First question is file format when capturing. The default format is DV and the video worked fine but the audio was a disaster. DVD format gave me an error about analyzing the file. So I went to AVI. Now the problem is that a 40 minute long video takes up 45GB. I'm new to video editing....is that normal?

I went along with it anyway and started to cut the video, but before I go any further I wanted some experienced opinions. Is AVI the best way to go? I suppose I could use autoGK to reduce the file size, but I dont want to lose any quality from the original.

Any help would be appreciated!

[lowellriggsiam]

An uncompressed AVI takes up lots of space that's why compressions such as divx & xvid are popular. Anytime you compress a video you will loose some quality. How are you transfering the video to your PC? USB or Firewire?

[kscott0986]

firewire. If i compress will the quality loss be noticeable? Does nero compress? If not, is there any freeware that does?


oh and should i be using AVI in the first place?

[lowellriggsiam]

Compression is not always noticable. When I have captured from my Camera to my laptop (vista) by firewire simply the act of turning on my video camera activates a program "media import wizard" and it does a good Job, Nero is a good program that sometimes has a mind of it's own.

[kscott0986]

what about cutting? Again, using Nero vision, i'm tryin to clip the last few seconds off a video and just saving that little change makes it go through the entire video as if it were capturing it again.

Am i doing something wrong?

[JohnnyMalaria]

If you are just cutting you can use Windows Movie Maker. It won't recompress the unaffected parts of the file. Of course it will take the time needed to copy the frames from one file to another. If you go this route then make sure WMM is set to output to DV AVI.

But - as stated above - it doesn't seem your files are necessarily in DV format (40 min of DV should be approx 8GB).