Sonic MyDVD and direct-to-dvd burning

[kenzie2]

Hi All,

I'm a newbie to these forums, so I'm assuming this is the right place to post this query -- if there's a better location for this topic, please let me know.

I recently purchased Sony's dru-500a dvd burner. It came with a package of software that included Sonic MyDVD. Mydvd seemed perfect for my needs, since I would like to archive a large amount of material from tape to dvd, and Mydvd claims to have direct-to-dvd authoring -- play the tape, hit record, and it copies on the fly to the disk, and then finalizes after you hit stop record.

However, I haven't had a lot of success with Mydvd. I've got a number of potential issues, but one of my first questions is going to be -- is MyDVD the only software out there offering direct-to-dvd? it claims to be on their homepage, but perhaps there is something a little higher end, or professional, that also offers this capability? If not, I guess the next question would be, what software would you recommend for this purpose?

My layout is as follows --

My vcr is connected to a Sony TRV-120 camcorder.
Camcorder connects to the computer via firewire
Computer has 512 RAM, 1.2 mhz athlon, 20 gig system drive and 70 gig storage.

I currently use the above setup just fine in order to capture with premiere 6.0, and edit video.

However, when I try to use Mydvd, I get a whole host of errors -- the main problem being that the Mydvd software appears to be trying to control the camcorder, and therefore never sees the video playing on the pass-through. If I have a tape in the camcorder, it starts playing and recording from the tape. If I remove the tape, it claims it cannot control the dv device, and gives up. Through a series of just generally hitting buttons on the camcorder, I've gotten it to record successfully twice, once to dvd, and once to vcd. The quality on the vcd was nowhere near good enough. The quality on the dvd was better, but still not what I hoped for. These two successes fell among a couple hundred failures, with a slew of different error messages. While the program has no problem seeing the video being passed to it, I can't even save it as a file on the harddrive most of the time, much less to directly to dvd.

Any suggestions? Should I give up on the notion of direct-to-dvd for now, or is there better software out there? If not direct-to-dvd, any recommendations for this type of large scale archiving process?

Many Thanks in advance on how I should get started,

Kenzie

[duff007@prodigy.net]

I had the problem with my firewire (Canon DV camcorder) when I was using either MyDVD or Showbiz to capture, then if I manually controlled the camcorder, the software locked on me. Understandable. Just click "done" with capture mode before manually changing tape or whatever.

I have an ATI AIW card for direct TV in as well, so when I capture there are 2 sources to choose from. The ATI or the DV camcorder. It never starts playing or recording from the DV unless I click on the record button.

I'm having trouble with the files captured via Showbiz when saved as a DVD setting and then using them in MyDVD. It says the file type isnt supported. Then when I save as MPEG2, it tries to author but says the bit rate is too high.

I did manage to capture direct from my TIVO to MyDVD and my VCR to MyDVD with no problem. I needed to use Showbiz on the DV tapes first because I needed to edit them before burning. This is what I'm trying to work on now. Good luck.