Total Newbie, someone please help me..

[Chris23]

Hi, I'm totally at a loss, and Iam in desprite need of some help.
Ok, I'll do my best to explain what I'm doing and what I want the end result to be.
The project that I'm working on is to get a tv series of 102 onto DVD. Currently I have about 60 shows done and they are on 28 blank DVD's, I can only get 2 shows on each DVD, and the shows are 30 min each and as I'm sure you know blank DVD's are very expensive. I did some searching and I found a guy who has a series of 120 shows on only 10 dvd's. I emailed him and asked him how to do it and he's the one who recommended me to this board, he says his tip is to get is the smallest file size with the best quality before I encode for the DVD.
He said that the DVD's need to be 720x480 and the sound has to be 48mhz. He said the programs that he uses are TMPG, and DVD Movie Factor 2. I bought an dl'ed the Movie Factory 2 just now, does anyone know anything about it? He told me he takes his mpegs into TMPG and creates them for vcd's then he says he takes em into the Movie Factor.
Recommending those products to me were a big help but needless to say I had alot of q's and he hasn't wrote me back so I figured I'd come here and hope someone here can help me.
I dl'ed the TMPG I think it was the 30-day trial, so I don't know if I'll get all the features on it or not. I opened it and found the 2 shows that I recorded from my VCR to my hard drive and tried to open them in the TMPG and it didn't work I got some kinda error msg everytime I tried it.
What I do to burn a DVD is this. I have the HP Media Center M370n. I have my VCR hooked up the tower and I open the Media Center and watch play the tape in it and I record the show to my computer thru the Media Center program. Then they have the Showbiz 2 already installed on the computer so I go there and open the shows and stuff and add the menus and such and then I burn the DVD, as I said I can only fit 2 shows on each blank DVD. And that is how I do it.
I have no clue how to do anything else or what programs to use. I read thru the board and I saw all these different programs listed with all these abbreviations that I have no clue what they are.
I have no clue why my saved shows won't open in the TMPG and if they did what I'd have to do next, I don't know how to reduce the size of the shows like he told me, I don't know how to do any of it.
I've seen alot of ppl from what I read and he even said something about VCD's, what are they? Why are they needed when making DVD's ?
Is there more programs I'll need? Once I have my shows saved on my computer after I record them there what do I do, what program do I use to reduce the size or whatever I'd have to do to get more shows onto one blank DVD instead of just 2 as I always get?
Please someone help me. I have no clue what I'm doing

[ZippyP.]

One word: Read.

[drewson99]

One time in my life on this board when I agreed with a one word answer, but I will contribute a little more, just for sh*ts.

Start with these:

https://www.videohelp.com/author

and go from there. It took me 2 years of trial and error while reading the guides here and at doom9 to get as good as I am now. lucky for you it's free info and can be done with free software, all you need to do is invest the time!

Andy

[Chris23]

thanks for the replies so far, i uninstalled the tmpg a few days ago because it wasnt doing anything for me now i tried to reinstall it and open it with winzip and its not working it says an error and ti wont even open.
after i save the shows onto the media center after i record is there anything i should save it as? could that be the prob that im saving it to the media center/ is tehre another program i could use that would make it easier?

[FulciLives]

Since you are still asking basic questions here one must surmise that you can't read ... for whatever reasons.

So do yourself and all of us a BIG favour and buy yourself a stand alone DVD recorder and use your computer as a paperweight. Leaving it on in the winter is also a good source of heat but you have to sit kinda close to it to reap much benefit.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[Chris23]

well when i download the tmpg and it won't open the winzip error comes up and says its not a valid archive, its gonna have me worried epsically since ive never used it before and i cant find any error msg on the link that guy gave me to help me figure out why its doing this, i came here for needed help not to be insulted, ty

[Chris23]

well when i download the tmpg and it won't open the winzip error comes up and says its not a valid archive, its gonna have me worried epsically since ive never used it before and i cant find any error msg on the link that guy gave me to help me figure out why its doing this, i came here for needed help not to be insulted, ty

[Chris23]

well when i download the tmpg and it won't open the winzip error comes up and says its not a valid archive, its gonna have me worried epsically since ive never used it before and i cant find any error msg on the link that guy gave me to help me figure out why its doing this, i came here for needed help not to be insulted, ty

[Chris23]

oops, sorry for all the repeat posts, i was re-dl'ing the tmpg and froze up and i didn't think it was going to go thru, sorry about that.

[iooi]

well when i download the tmpg and it won't open the winzip error comes up and says its not a valid archive, its gonna have me worried epsically since ive never used it before and i cant find any error msg on the link that guy gave me to help me figure out why its doing this, i came here for needed help not to be insulted, ty

That problem sounds like a croupt download and the best bet is download it again.
Not getting at you same as the others arnt either, but folks have advised you to look at the guides on the left which are the best source of info on doing stuff like this. People have taken the time and trouble to write and post these on the net so people like us can short cut to being experts on using the software concerned.
Take the advice print them out sit down and read them practise what they tell you.
You will make mistakes along the way but thats how most of us have learned a lot..