REally need some basic advice

[Lensmeister]

I hope someone can help me. I am a newbie and I am sorry if I am asking questions others have asked before. Some of the artcles have left me a little confused. (it's easy confusing me ask anyone!)

I have a lot of old footage on video 8 (8mm) anaglogue tapes (PAL) that I'd like to convert to DVD for family members.

I have a mono canon camcorder, a sony 8mm VCR (although broken I could get it repaired if needed), Belkin USB videobus, DVD-Lab, Nero6, Win Avi, Window Movie Maker, an NEC Dual layer DVD rewriter connected to my laptop by USB.


Can someone pleae talk me through how to start, things like settings, from capture to menus and burning.

I've tried to capturing using movie maker once before but it came out mono, small, and as an avi file and I just deleted it out.

I have been looking through the forum and the articles and I have some times been a little lost.


Thanks in advance. I'd like to put together a DVD by Christmas for my Mother's 70th Birthday.

Thanks again.

Lensmeister.

[Matt D]

Quick rundown. First you need to capture your footage, I would recommend Virtual VCR for this. Now you will have an AVI file which needs to be converted to Mpeg2. I use TMPGEnc for this step.
After you have a DVD compatible MPG you need to author, which basically involves chapters, and menu creation. I would use TMPGEnc DVD Author for this because it's incredibly easy.
Last bit of advice is read, read, read. The guides may be confusing to you, but contain invaluable knowledge. Barring that, you should just buy a DVD recorder and do it that way.

[Garibaldi]

I can add to what Matt D said:
All the software that I will recommend is free:
1. Capture your video: if possible I would recommend finding a piece of capture software that captures DIRECTLY into a format called mpeg2, which is what dvds are in. This way you don't have to render your footage into the right format, which takes time (this is only if you don't want to apply special animations or effects to your vids). Check out the tools section for this and experiment with a bunch of them.


2. Take your captured video and edit it. An easy way to do this is to split the video and audio into 2 files and then cut out the parts you don't want. First you will need to split the video to audio (mp2) and video (m2v) files. Download demux, found here:
http://www.geocities.com/ted_rossin/tools/Video/Video.html
This is a command line tool but is not that hard to use. Now copy demux.exe to the folder with your mpeg file. Open a command prompt (start, run, cmd.exe) and type:
cd C:\[path to the folder containing your mpeg] and hit enter
Then type:
demux.exe
this will start demux. Now type:
demux.exe [yourmpegfile].mpeg
and hit enter, this will demux your mpeg file.
Now you have 2 files, m2v and mp2.

3. A windows program that will cut out the parts that you don't want is Mpeg2Schnitt. A great linux program for doing this is gopdit.

4. Now you have the mpegs that you want on your dvd and you need to make your menus and such (this is called authoring). I would recommend using GUI for DVD Author. Simply import your files and play around with it a little to create your menus (let me know what you want me to go into more detail about). When you want to create your dvd simply click Create DVD.

5. Now for burning. Open Nero and create a new Data DVD. Drag the 2 folders that GUI for DVD Author created in your output folder (AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS) only your dvd. Don' t worry, AUDIO_TS is supposed to be empty but is necessary. Now click burn- your dvd is done!

This may sound overwhelming but trust me, it gets much easier. I just started video-editing at the beginning of the summer and it has gotten alot easier because I have learned alot about it and found the right method for me. I'm glad to answer any questions that you might have.
Garibaldi

[Lensmeister]

Thanks guys for the posts and the emails I recieved. I hope to make a start on initial test of the first DVD soon .. (once the kids are in bed )

I have downloaded the files listed above and I'll play a bout with them and see which one I like. I was getting a little used to DVD-Lab as I have copied a guide from here .. now I just have to put it in to practice.

Watch this space .. I suspect that I'll have a few little (or big) questions in future.

cheers all .

Lensmeister.

[tekkieman]

Lensmeister - Have you captured the video yet? I was curious to see how you made out with that....

[Lensmeister]

I am hoping to do it tomorrow night as I am currently watching the ENGLAND vs Spain game .... and the kids are running riot !

But tomorrow I wil get to grips with it.

[Phoebos]

Well its a matter of one s personal feelings about the various tools. for examble a have simplified the steps :

1. capture with MainConcept to avi format
2. convert with MainConcept again, to mpeg2
3 Author and burn with TMPGEnc DVD Auhtor (the same tool can be used for cutting unwanted parts from auhtoring)

Simple hmm?