What to Buy??

[sccaits5]

New to the forum here. Found it through a google search. My needs are pretty simple. Just looking to transfer movies made on Sony Digital 8 camcorder tapes to DVD. I want to edit the movies. Take clips from the tape, store it on the hard drive, put them in order, then burn a DVD. I do SCCA racing and want to convert portions of these tapes to DVD. Also family movies. You know how it is, 60 minutes of your 4 year olds birthday equates to about 10 minutes of good video.Tried Windows Moviemaker, takes to much memory and is way to slow. Also, don't necessarily need all the effects. Don't want to spend 400 bucks for the Pioneer 640........maybe that's what it takes. Someone steer me in the right direction. The help you get at the big box electronic stores is useless for the most part. Thanks.

[DereX888]

New to the forum here. Found it through a google search. My needs are pretty simple. Just looking to transfer movies made on Sony Digital 8 camcorder tapes to DVD. I want to edit the movies. Take clips from the tape, store it on the hard drive, put them in order, then burn a DVD. I do SCCA racing and want to convert portions of these tapes to DVD. Also family movies. You know how it is, 60 minutes of your 4 year olds birthday equates to about 10 minutes of good video.Tried Windows Moviemaker, takes to much memory and is way to slow. Also, don't necessarily need all the effects. Don't want to spend 400 bucks for the Pioneer 640........maybe that's what it takes. Someone steer me in the right direction. The help you get at the big box electronic stores is useless for the most part. Thanks.

transfer movies
edit the movies
store it on the hard drive
burn a DVD
tapes to DVD

I would suggest spending money on encoding and authoring software/hardware for your computer (if it already doesn't have any) rather than buying any standalone recorder...

Since you've tried to do it on Windows Movie Maker, it tells me youre a new to it.
Therefore, based on what youre saying you need, I'd suggest some MPEG-2 encoder and a TMPG DVD Author, that would probably do, and ought to be easy enough even for a newbie.
(Assuming your PC profile is correct, or it has a dvd writer and its not some old Pentium-based machine )