DV to DVD quickest way

[Nosey249]

What is the quickest, easiest way to convert from dv to dvd, I have a sony trv260...

only have had it a month and have converted 2 hours of tape to dvd, and still pictures for regular prints and copied a different 2 hours of tape to the hard drive..

did the following:

1. copied using dvio, tried windv but had lost frames, dvio had 0 lost frames. real time, +/- 18 gig

2. loaded into tmpgenc plus and created mpegII file, +/- 4 gig, conversion, +/- 5 hours

3. loaded into tmpgenc dvd, created menu and converted to dvd, +/- 5 hours again

4. burned dvd, nero express, +/- 20 minutes

overall, quality was great, but +/- 15 hours to get a 2 hour final product!!!

my system is a 1.8 gig machine with 896 of mem and between 3 hard drives have about 140 gig space (80g, 40g, 20g), 3 cd drives, (cd/rw, dvd player, 8x dvd burner)


anyone have any good suggestions??

I also play back and take stills and take up to Sams Club for .18 each and get 4x6 or $2 each and 5x7. I've been using windvd to play the file and take the stills, anyone have any better suggestion for a player, I have also played back the dv file and the dvd file to see which looks better for stills, I have also paused then taken a still and also kept playing and taken the still..

any suggestions on getting better stills..

Here's the major problem, my wife got this for me last month for our aniv, she asked if I wanted a video or a digital camera, I told her video because with my setup I can take the video and burn dvd's and I can get stills, candid most of the time, and have my selection of the still.. Now I'm having to justify the 15+ hours to do the conversions, she kinda loves the time cause I try not to use my computer during the 2 5 hour periods, if I'm smart I start it when I goto work in the morning, but this takes 2 days to get a dvd, if I do it at night when I am home, it's 5 hours twice of watching tv with her on shows I really don't like to watch

any suggestions would be great...

[tag]

Since it doesn't appear as if you're doing a whole heck of a lot of editing, ever consider getting a standalone DVD recorder?

[Nosey249]

at just over $1k per month in meds for my wife (about 25 meds using my insurance and of course most of her meds are at the higher $50 co-pay), it would be xmas before I could justify to her getting one....

[p_l]

Ulead DVD MovieFactory 3 has a Direct to Disc feature which sounds just like what you're looking for.

Go Directly to the Disc
If you just want to get your movies from your camcorder to a disc fast, then use Direct-to-Disc to record from any video source directly to a DVD in real-time.

Straight-to-Disc Capture & Burn
There's no faster way to copy your movies to disc. Burn digital video or VHS movies straight from your camcorder, VCR, or TV to discs without storing the video onto your hard drive first.

Even pre-select a Menu Template and your movies will automatically be inserted in your menus for ready-to-view discs.
Easily edit any project directly on a rewritable DVD by adding more video or images to slideshows, or modifying menu item.

[chadd_st_clair]

Sonic MyDVD also has a direct to DVD. These are fairly easy to use, but it sounds like you are using the best tools already. Your times involved sound about right to me. I'm currently on a 1.6 GHz machine, but my new 3.0 GHz is coming today. For encoding it's all about the processor speed and HyperThreading.

After I capture to DVAVI, I edit the pieces of the video out that I don't think are relevent. This reduces the file size and encoding time.

Other than that, you are using good tools. A lot of people (including me) are moving to DVD Lab to author and burn the disk. There are a lot more options and way more control over the disk, so the learning curve is larger, but once you use it you won't go back. Also, it allows you to author and burn from the same program. This allows you to start the process and walk away (or go to bed/work).

Welcome to the last frontier of why computers still need to be faster and hard drives still need to get bigger!

Chadd

[guns1inger]

Is the 5 hours at step 3 you creating menus and playing around, TMPGEnc DVD Author re-encoding ? If it is re-encoding, you need to produce the correct streams in step 2, and step 3 should be much shorter.

Having said that, it has taken me almost 2 months to finish my daughter's birthday disk, so 15 hours is pretty sweet.

[Nosey249]

I tried unlead dvd maker and my time was reduced drasticly, 1.5 hours (give or take) to move the video, create the menu and burn, I think it took about 3 hours total, maybe alittle longer..

I saved it in good quality which gives 90 minutes to the dvd, if I recall.. only problem I had was the picutre quality was not that great, was alittle blocky. considering I messed up with the menu and have 2 instead of 1 I plan on redoing it but this time I will bring it in with best quality, which states an hour per dvd, but if the video quality is fine, I will use dvd shrink to shrink it alittle to make it fit..

I'm still trying to find the best, quickest way to pull still pictures off of it so I can get 4x6's.. I have pulled a few using unlead but havn't taken to sam's to get printed yet.. maybe this week..

[guns1inger]

There really is no way to get good quality and a fasr encode without resorting to very expensive hardware encoders. This is especially true for real-time encoders. To get the best quality, you need to do at least a 2 pass VBR encode with a good encoder (TMPGEnc, MainConcept, CinemaCraft). With any of these, and a few hours patience, you would be able to fit 2 hours of good quality footage on a single disk (I would bet it would look 50-100% better than Ulead's highest quality). 4 - 5 hours to encode out to streams is pretty normal. It's one of things you learn to set and forget overnight.

[Nosey249]

ok, new problem...

I took my dv, with sound, went through the process with unlead dvd maker and I have sound with my editing, but, if I select properities it says no audio, and when I compile, I get no sound..

any suggestions...