Quickest way from DV to DVD

[grigbigl]

I record our school's junior varsity and varsity football and basketball games on a Panasonic digital video recorder. I put these games on a DVD with a menu to choose which game is played. No editing other than trimming the beginning and ending of the games.

I have been successful doing this by the following procedure.

1. Import the games via iMovie and make the trimming edits. This takes about 2 hours to import both games and edit.

2. "Share" the videos via imovie to a .MOV file with high quality. This takes about three hours to export.

3. Using Toast and the two games video clips, I create a simple two choice menu. This takes about another three hours.

Total time: about 8 hours.

Anyone know a quicker way?

I use a 1.2 GHz ibook with 768 MB Ram, OS 10.3.6, Toast 6.1.1.

Thanks,
Greg

[Frobozz]

You don't need the Share step. Toast will burn the iMovie using the iMovie Project file. Here's a link that explains how to do this:
http://boards.support.roxio.com/roxio/board/message?board.id=0000020&message.id=7562#M7562

You also could skip iMovie as well and use Toast's plug and burn feature to import the video from the camera to Toast. Toast lets you trim off the beginning and end of each video you import.

The fastest way to create your DVDs is to use a standalone DVD recorder with hard drive and Firewire input instead of using the Mac. You can import the video to the DVD recorder's hard drive from the Panasonic camera, trim off the pieces you don't want and have the DVD recorder burn the DVD. Since the recorder imports the video in MPEG 2 format there is no additional encoding time recquired.

[grigbigl]

Frobozz

Thanks for the ideas. The standalone DVD recorder sounds like a great idea. Where would I look for one of these devices? (I'm assuming you are talking about something besides an external DVD burner.) Any brand/model recommendations?

Greg

[Frobozz]

I have a Pioneer DVR-510H-S that has been succeeded by the DVR-520H-S which is succeeded by the DVR-533H-S. The 533 can be found for about $350. Avoid the 531 at Walmart because it lacks the Firewire input.

There is a DVD Recorders forum here and also a link on the left where you can search for user reviews of different DVD recorder models.

I'm only familiar with Pioneer (and like it) but others like the JVC and Toshiba recorders, too. One quirk about the Pioneer is that the recorded DVDs are always in auto-play mode. This means the first title starts playing when inserted into the DVD player without showing a menu. The menu only appears if you press the menu button on the remote. I believe some other brands let you choose if the menu appears upon disc insertion or if you want auto-play.

[ipdave]

Walmart has $99 recorders; you can find LiteOn and Ilo (same),etc. Work great, less hassle.

[Frobozz]

Walmart has $99 recorders; you can find LiteOn and Ilo (same),etc. Work great, less hassle.

Just make sure that you get one with a built-in hard drive and a Firewire port. I haven't seen that available for $99 but I have seen a Lite-on at Costco for $300 and Amazon.com recently had the Pioneer 533 for $300 as well. However, Amazon isn't an authorized Pioneer reseller so there is no Pioneer warranty when buying from them.