DV camcorder software advice

[daesdaemar]

Now that I have a DV camcorder, I'd like to make my own DVDs. I'd appreciate some advice (pros and cons) on the best (better) programs available, like Adobe Premier, ULead, Dazzle, etc. I'd like a balance between ease of use and prgram capabilities.

Thanks.

[kazzer]

Although i havent used it much, I think for the price Pinnacle Studio 8 is excellent. This software is a great solution from capturing right through to authoring and its easy to use and yet very powerful.

I use Video Vegas 4.0 and its excellent but more expensive. This software is very powerful and offers super fast rendering. Its simple to use for basic editing. You cannot author with it unfortunately.

[ptmurphy]

I would second Pinnacle 8. Out of the box it may be buggy, but there is an update on the web-site (www.pinnaclesys.com) that has helped a bunch.

I have Premiere that I use sometimes to do more advanced stuff, but to be quite honest, Premiere is quite powerful for the price, if it works on your system.

[daesdaemar]

I will have to look into Pinnacle 8. I have heard the Premiere is excellent, but very difficult to learn. What's your feeling on that?

[kazzer]

Yes im sure it is excellent (havent used it)

But you must ask yourself "what do i want to achieve?". For me, i want to edit my old 8mm camcorder and put it on CD/DVD, put some old VHS on CD, and record some stuff from TV. So all I need is basic software that can capture, cut out some scenes, do some basic transitons and titles and render. Thats all I want. I use TMPGENc to encode, and NERO to author. So I dont have a need for Premiere at the moment. I dont want to spend big €$£ on software I find difficult to use. But like I said I havent tried it. I might give the demo a go. Give it a try yourself, along with all other software you can, like Studio 8, etc.

[tylerjosh]

Hi i messed around with alot of diffrent progs to capture and encode from dv to dvd, and have found that dvd movie factory 2 to capture from your camcorder and tmpenc to encode to mpg2, and then finally dvd movie factory 2 again to burn my mpg2 file as a dvd.
For me this works perfect with perfect result's for my home camcorder movie's.