DVD Virgin needs help!

[dantune]

Christmas is almost upon us and my wife is expecting to have all of our Home Hi8 video tapes converted to DVD.

There is so much good info on this forum, but I think it would take me until the new year to understand it all. If anyone could spare a moment to help me through the following, it would be appreciated:

Need to convert Hi8 video to DVD (would consider SVCD if the quality is almost as good as DVD, but am a bit concerned about the 35 minute limitation).
I don't need any fancy capabilities in terms of subtitles, music, etc. Just need Chapters to be able to 'fast forward' to.

I do not have any hardware, other than a PC, so I need to know what type of DVD burner I need, what type of capture device and software I need. (playback would be on an Panasonic RV30 - although if I need a new one, I will get one)

I am sure once I have all these components, I can read the instructions, but a generalized step-by-step process would give me a good idea of what I am in for.

I need the simplest method to be able to accomplish this.

I have about 12 tapes that need to be done before X-Mas, otherwise I'll be in the dog house!

Thanks in advance for the help.

[bugster]

Which burner? !st check your player in the DVD compatibility list on the left of the page to see which type of media it can handle. It will probably be DVD-r. In this case your choice of burner is the pioneer A04/5 or the Sony DRU500. Its then down to personal choice and cost.

Capture device, I will leave that advice to someone else.

Encode and author. Well for absolute simplicity an all in one solution like Ulead DVD Workshop will be ok but for best quality encode with TmpGenc or CCE and then author in DVD WS.

Hope this helps