OT: Recording Video to DVD Question

Try Google.

From what I can gather from the canon software manuals, ZR series, the movies are in AVI format. You should be able to use DVD flick

to process them into DVD. Apparently the camera looks like a drive when plugged in. I dont think you need

1394, USB 2.0 should be fine.

If you have the HG, HV or HR then you need to shoot in DV format, not HD format. DVD flick is a little finicky with HD formats. (its a FFmpeg thing)

Good luck, have fun with the new toy.

Cheers

message

are in AVI format.

into DVD.

1394, USB 2.0 should be fine.

format. DVD flick is a little finicky with HD

The tape cartridge is marked "DV". Thanks for the info!

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
         America: Land of the Free, Because of the Brave

Need an application that can capture data from your camcorder over the Firewire, DV, 1394 cable as an AVI (uncompressed) file. Then encode it into MPEG and create the DVD file structure and finally burn it on a DVD. Your camera should have come with some demo software or ads for DVD authoring software. Pinnacle Software makes a package that can import your video, allow you to edit it, make menus, the whole 9 yards into a pretty professional looking DVD. You'll need a robust PC with a gig of ram and a few hundred gig hard drive and Windows XP. If I recall there is an application you can purchase and download over the net called DVD Santa. It can import, create and burn a DVD from your camcorder.

The BEST way to turn a video into a DVD is with a stand alone DVD recorder. No hassles, don't need a PC, just a multimedia output from your camcorder into the video input on the DVD burner. Some stand alone burners like my Lite On have an eee1394 port on them but it isn't needed as I have made decent DVD both ways. One thing is you can get really elaborate making the DVD on your PC but it takes TIME. Lots of time to render the MPEG files from the camera's AVI format. Personally I'll use my stand alone DVD burner from now on.

Have a look here:

and do some reading.

On Dec 15, 8:13=EF=BF=BDpm, Jim Thompson

You can 'play' the video directly into your computer using the appropriate Firewire (IEEE1394) connection. Software like Adobe Premier, Pinnacle Studio, Nero and VideoEdit Magic all have direct DV controls. They will allow you to join, edit and dub - provided you have a decent CPU and video card, plus a whomping amount of RAM and harddrive space. 2GB is a good start for the former and a minimum of 2x the size of the DVD should be available to hold work-files on your computer. ie 10GB for a 4.5GV single layer and

20GB for a dual-layer DVD.

Quite a few DVD players on the market will take DivX encoded video (RCA, Samsung, Philips et al) - which means you do not need to author to full-fledged DVD (vob-format) - just save it as a DivX-encoded AVI file on the DVD disk.

I tend to use Nero for the simpler stuff and Studio for more involved projects.

QS

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

The H.264 stuff is far superior on image quality, and ends up in the same file size.

True enough, but I am unaware of any commercial DVD-player that is H.264 capable.

The advantages of H.264 was one of the reasons I recommended (on a different thread) the Casio EX-V7 (now the -V8) as an ideal 'companion' video device - it records H.264 video to an SD card which transfers painlessly to virtually any computer.

QS

My object is DVD recording suitable for distribution to family members with conventional DVD players.

Does that change what I should get for software?

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
         America: Land of the Free, Because of the Brave

Why didn't you go for a DVD camcorder in the first place?

M

Loaded question: "What is the best way.."

1394 output is Firewire. Kind of like USB in function, but works better with a continuous stream of data. All modern Macs come with Firewire. Many modern PCs come with a Firewire port. There are two versions of the connector. If your computer doesn't have a Firewire port, you can get a Firewire card for under $30. The TI and Via Firewire chipsets have worked well under Win2k and XP.

My perspective is from video editing. There may be handy consumer toys to directly record video from your camera to a DVD disk and put in all the overhead (menu structure).

Pick up some sort of video editing program. It's nice to show a edited video sans the quick pan across the floor shots and Aunt Mable's arse. I like Vegas, but it's pricy. There are others like Premiere and Avid (really hard to use). Vegas, Premiere, & Avid are full featured editors, thus, hard to use since they have tons of options. The cheapo editors (e.g. Pinnacle) are probably are much easier to use and hopefully work better than they did 10 years ago (they were pure crap back then). I notice Vegas has a cheapo version which I have never seen plus you can download a demo version. I've only used the pro version which is a hair puller.

Apparently, Pinnacle still sucks. Vegas has been crash-free and has always worked well for me once I figured out the proper settings.

The video editing programs have a capture utility which handles the transfer from camera to computer. The camera can be remotely controlled from the capture utility GUI via Firewire. I like to break my video in 700MB (CD sized) chunks (this is an option in some of the capture utilities) when I save it to my computer. A decent editor can bring in all the chunks seamlessly. The capture utility will save your DV video as an AVI (AVI is only a wrapper which contains some other video format).

To make a DVD that can be played in a DVD movie player requires some sort of utility to create the various required files (video and menu programs). Under the Sony Vegas line, they have a program called DVD Architect. Under DVD Architect, you can create nice menus and scene selection. Pinnacle can create a DVD movie disk from their Studio program, but, I have no idea if it can do nice menus with scene selection. BTW, DVD movie disks use MPEG2 video formats and can utilize AC3 audio (Dolby).

You need lots of disk space! 1.5 hours of DV video is about 20 GB. When converted to MPEG2, you can get 1.5 hours to fit on a 4.3GB DVD movie disk. Multiprocessors on your computer are helpful for those editing programs that support multiprocessor environment.

--
Mark

On a sunny day (Sun, 16 Dec 2007 22:01:12 GMT) it happened qrk wrote in :

Exactly.

Most modern DVD players now accept Divx encoded AVIs.

Soon, they will all accept H.264 files. H.264 is what is in our future, both on a disc, and over the net.

One other option is to get one of those Sony stand-alone DVD recorders. They accept standard composite NTSC (yellow=3Dvideo, red=3Dright, white=3Dleft) RCA type cable, and record direct to DVD in real time. The devices have limited menu editing capability.

But for the $200 or so that'll set you back, you're better off with software. The learning curve is really not that steep. You'll be up and running no time.

-mpm

(snip)

Rendering/burning software, no. If you will want to cut and splice - and what home video *doesn't* need that?! - you'll need something that can do it. Last month I captured some 20- and 25-year-old VHS home movies and burned them to DVD. The s/w that was bundled with the USB capture device does rudimentary cut/splice but not very well, so I'll be looking for something better soon.

I would caution you that the type of DVD (DVD+R or DVD-R or DVD-R/W) *might* prove to be a problem to those who try to play the discs. Two of my family members have no trouble playing DVDs that I burned, but two other members can't play any of the very same DVDs on their respective home DVD decks. Out of desperation those latter two fed the discs to the DVD drive on their PC, but only one was successful. (I suspect, but don't know fer sure, that the PC "DVD drive" that threw up is actually a CD drive; debug is on-going.)

My DVD deck, a 10-month-old Sony, has read every CD and DVD I've fed to it, from read/write music CDs to read/write DVDs, from Kodak Photo CD to DVD+R to DVD-R, but I suspect that not all DVD decks are so capable.

--
Michael

I went the easy route... Sony VRD-MC5... plug together and let 'r rip... family copies PDQ.

...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona Voice:(480)460-2350 | | | E-mail Address at Website Fax:(480)460-2142 | Brass Rat | |

| 1962 | America: Land of the Free, Because of the Brave

t*

I have the same basic problem, but have found that DVD- discs seem to be the most "universally playable" in the largest variety of machines. My guess is the DVD-minus format is older, and hence better supported as a legacy format.(?)

-mpm =EF=BF=BD