OT: DVD Authoring

[jeff_schiller]

Just starting to consider purchasing some equipment/software to convert my VHS collection to DVDs as well as continue my CN recording via DVD. I would like the following capabilities:

- the ability to hook up any A/V source (i.e. cable, VCR, camcorder) and record the A/V to a digital video file of DVD quality
- the ability to generate custom menus/titles
- the ability to assemble the entire DVD on the computer

I want to avoid purchasing more than one DVD "burning" device.

What do you use? What software/hardware would you recommend? I'm interested in purchasing a DVD burner but hopefully it would allow the capabilities above. I'm assuming that if I want to record directly to DVD I'd have to turn on my computer and have some scheduled tasks that record the program (alternatively I could record it on VHS and then do the transfer but that's additional pain). Unless there are some fancy component DVD burners that allow sophisticated menu construction, etc or interface with the computer for that.

Beyond cartoons I'd also like to use this for our home movies and other things which may still be in stereo.

Here's what I have:

- PC with dual Athlon MP 1800s
- 500 MB RAM (I'm considering purchasing more)
- at least 1 empty PCI slot
- nice chunk of free disk space (~100 GB free but I'm considering purchasing more)
- Firewire/USB 2.0 card in a PCI slot
- nVidia Ti4600 (video card with S-Video in)

Lessee...budget would be hovering around $500 USD or less...

Thanks,
Jeff

[Davesnothere]

Well, Jeff, I can't do what I do with VHS-to-DVD transfers and compilation and menu-building without my separate DVD recorder in the living room and the burner on my computer. If you want to do all this with just a DVD burner in your PC, you're going to need a really good capture program to go with the card, but as good as any of them might be, I haven't heard of any that record to your hard drive in DVD-ready MPEG-2 format. So you will need a converter program, too (I've got TMPGEnc myself) and you'll have to buy a license for it after 30 days. Recording from satellite or cable will be a pain in the butt this way, too. You'll have to either move the computer next to the TV or run cabling (and S-Video cables aren't really cheap!). An alternative to that would involved using a hacked Tivo with a much larger hard drive than stock which would have to be swapped back and forth between PC and Tivo. If you can manage with just the burner on the PC until you can save a bit more cash, I'd recommend a VCR/DVDR combo for when you get serious about it. My unit is a Sansui VRDVD-4005, and retails around $350. People who have reviewed it either absolutely love it or despise it. (I like mine!) As long as nothing resembling Macrovision exists on your tapes, it will make outstanding copies to a DVD-R/RW, and makes excellent recording from satellite broadcasts. Some examples of my work are on their way...mailed 'em this morning! ;)

Either way, good luck. You might be able to get both a burner and set-top recorder for $500 or less, and use the software you'll need to author finished versions of DVD's for free for 30 days until you can afford the licenses. (About another $150).

Dave.

[Frizfrelengfan]

Jeff,

Making a DVD has five steps:

1. Capture (get video onto hard disk in raw, AVI format)
2. Edit (Add special effects and transitions)
3. Render (convert AVI format to MPEG2 format)
4. Author (Add menus and chapters)
5. Burn DVD

Unfortunately the best software to do one of these is not always the best software to do the others. I use Pinnacle Studio 7 (came with my FireWire card) to capture and edit, TMPGENC (trialware) to render, Ulead DVD Movie Factory 2 (cheap) to author, and Roxio to burn. You won't be doing much editing if you're converting existing video. I also find adding chapters is time-consuming, so I just insert chapter points every five minutes, and I do minimal menus. Ulead provides good basic menus.

My capture hardware is a Canopus ADVC-50 (was $300 - price may have come down). It connects to the FireWire card and provides excellent video. It has an (undocumented) Macrovision defeat feature (which I tested but don't use).

An excellent place to get DVD creation questions answered is www.dvdrhelp.com (http://www.dvdrhelp.com).

One more thing - Be sure you have LOTS AND LOTS of hard disk space. Raw AVI files EAT IT UP IN A HURRY. I have an 80G hard drive that I keep clean for video capturing. You should be running Windows 2000 or XP with the NTFS file system.

[Banned Bunny]

There are cards and boxes capable of capturing directly to mpeg 2 but avoid them if you want do do any editting. I use an old Dazzle (not available anymore, try canopus) to get raw DV AVI onto my hard drive, using Scenalyzer. Splitting material into 6 and 7 minute chunks, with beginning and ending black screen is done with free Windows XP Movie maker. TmpGenc does the mpeg encoding, and Tmpgenc DVD Author with Dolby plugin does the conversion to AC-3 dolby (uses less space for sound than uncompressed PCM.)

Having 2 separate drives will really speed things up when you edit.

[Tom Stathes]

Dazzles are still around, I just bought mine a couple of weeks ago!
(Circuit City)

Although I have not mastered how to perfectly get all the cartoons to be complete on a home made DVD, I was able to upload to the comp from my vcr, edit the silent Bonzo cartoons and save them (I outputed to VHS again just to have a tape copy, but you can output to anything whenever you want.)

Can anyone help me out? I just can't seem to figure out why when I burned my first DVD, only two of the cartoons ran completely, whereas the first two only started playing within the last minute of the cartoons. Also, after that, I think the program freezes and the burning doesn't occur (but the files were rendered, the burning process just didn't start)
Does anyone know what the problem is?
Tom

[Banned Bunny]

To Tom:


If you bought a Dazzle I assume you are using MyDVD.

Hint No #.1 never Ever ever (never that is) burn to dvd. Always (everytime that is) write the image to the hard drive, test it with powerdvd or equivalent, then burn.


The current batch of dazzles is of the USB mpeg encoding kind, not the DV-AVI kind. Pinnacle bought them, then released their own inferior moviebox DV.

[Larry T]

I can outline my procedure with my hardware elements:


Making a DVD in five steps:

1. Capture (get video onto hard disk in raw format)Before Pinnacle decided to try to break into the market with their inferior so-called-friendly-based software, I bought a SUPERIOR Pinnacle DC2000 capture card which can capture and encode into MPEG-2 in real-time (cuts out step #3). I export from an SVHS Sony VCR, DVD-Direct, or a Laserdisc player to maintain quality. You might be able to find new ones on overstock on eBay since Pinnacle uses their own lousy "all-in-one" packages now. :shrug:


2. Edit (Add special effects and transitions)I use Adobe Premiere, the most superior method IMHO, of rendering, editing, and 'restoring' my clips and cartoons to the desired output state (* BE PREPARED TO SPEND A LOT OF TIME AND EFFORT TO GET GOOD AT DOING THIS- IT'S NOT AS EASY AS YOU THINK TO GET A DECENT-LOOKING FINAL RENDER... ALSO MAKE SURE THERE ARE NO BLUNT OR POINTY OBJECTS NEARBY, AND DON'T HAVE YOUR WORKSTATION TOO CLOSE TO A SOLID BRICK WALL, YOU MAY BE VERY TEMPTED TO HURT YOURSELF OR YOUR EQUPIMENT AFTER NUMEROUS FAILED ATTEMPTS).

Also, Premiere allows working in direct MPEG-2 if you have the Pinnacle DC2000 installed (this saves HOURS of encoding time and disk space).


3. Render (convert AVI format to MPEG2 format)Does not have to be done if using above configuration.


4. Author (Add menus and chapters)Although it's kind of quirky, so far the most control that I found can be had using Sonic Solutions' DVDit. You can construct and build your own menus, buttons, screenshots, etc. in Adobe Photoshop and just import directly them into DVDit. Drag-and-drop your prepared MPEG-2 Media as well, and you just build an output project, which you can save as an image on a DVD later in case you decide to make a few more copies of it. DVDit also allows making animated menus, hidden buttons for Easter Eggs, and lots of other cool tricks. You can also encode in AC3 DOLBY with it to save space in your project file.


5. Burn DVD DVDit will just burn your project directly from the project interface. When making source backups however, I use Nero, because no DVD-interactive methods are needed.

[Feslmogh]

One thing you might want to do is to look for a DV camera with a A/V through put (meaning you can transfer VHS to DV via the camer). You can usually go to Sears and look at the clearence display and see what they have. I got one for $199 and the only thing it didn't have was the software disk (most of the time you can download it from the support page.)

I made some dvds this way...

Copy the VHS or PVR or Laserdisc onto the DV
Transfer DV to Computer
Calculate the bit rate on Bitrate Caculator (http://www.videohelp.com/calc.htm)
Edit and render the AVI to DVD compliant MPG
Create DVD using TMPGEnc DVD Author 1.5 (http://www.pegasys-inc.com/en/product/tda.html)
and that's how I do it... PPPPT:p

[jeff_schiller]

One thing you might want to do is to look for a DV camera with a A/V through put (meaning you can transfer VHS to DV via the camer). You can usually go to Sears and look at the clearence display and see what they have. I got one for $199 and the only thing it didn't have was the software disk (most of the time you can download it from the support page.)

I made some dvds this way...


Copy the VHS or PVR or Laserdisc onto the DV
Transfer DV to Computer
Calculate the bit rate on Bitrate Caculator (http://www.videohelp.com/calc.htm)
Edit and render the AVI to DVD compliant MPG
Create DVD using TMPGEnc DVD Author 1.5 (http://www.pegasys-inc.com/en/product/tda.html)
and that's how I do it... PPPPT:p

Yep, I have a Sony TRV camera and I can do this very thing (copy VHS to DV, transfer DV to Computer). Thus, I can get it into AVI or MPEG format on my PC but I'm not sure on the formats, I'll have to look steps 3 and 4 a little better. The one thing I don't have is good DVD authoring software for menus, etc and the actual DVD burner (what I have is Sonic MyDVD, but I'll be honest, I haven't played with it too much because I don't have a drive yet!).


Thus, if I get a DVD burner drive I'm sure I can find some good software (either what comes with the drive or the suggestions in this thread). The one problem I have is that I have to do three total transfers (VHS -> DV -> Computer -> DVD) and I was hoping to eliminate one of them...


Thanks for everyone's responses!


Regards,
Jeff

[bigshot]

...of course you could get a Mac and all the software you need would come standard with the computer!

(gloat-gloat)

See ya
Steve

[Banned Bunny]

If you care what your edit points look like, and when you want them to be placed vs. where you can place them in the GOP, you will use AVI and not MPEG capturing.

[Goatgod]

My rig consists of an ATI Radeon All In Wonder 9000 video/ tv tuner card. Paired with a dvd burner it is all you will need. And it comes with a badazz remote! It captures from cable, sat, vcr, camera directly to dvd compliant mpeg2. When I need to edit commercials out I use Womble Multimedia's MPEG2vcr, it allows me to cut commercials, and save the program without re-encoding it. I then use WINAVI to form the dvd structures, I usually don't mess with making menus, not too worried about them. The best capture card/dvd recording device source is www.videohelp.com (http://www.videohelp.com/) I learned most of what I know through reading posts and guides there, and my own trial and error.