So, I've got all this great footage. Now I need to get it on my computer and eventually on DVDs to give as Christmas gifts.
I purchased a firewire card on eBay for 4.95. It was brand new and it came with the cable and Ulead VideoStudio 5. Did you know that VideoStudio is up to version 9 now? No? I didn't either, but I do now. When I went to their website to see if I could get some help in actually using this P.O.S.S. The last "S" stands for software.
The capturing part went awesome. I plugged the camcorder in and it was instantly recognized by the computer. I pressed the capture button in the software, play on the camcorder and let it do its thing.
After capturing all of the footage contained on 8 tapes, I've got 12 files ranging in size from 3gb to 13gb. The quality of the video is amazing. I probably should have started with transferring just one tape though and working with that until I get the hang of it. I was (am) a little overwhelmed.
Now what do I do. The software sucks. I can't even describe how much it sucks. It has an interface where everything is a picture, no text describing what that picture means. I HATE that. At first I wanted to make a few clips to upload to the internets for my friends to see. I mess around with it for what seems like hours and finally I am able to make 3 clips. The software didn't want to cut the scenes out where I wanted it to. It was always clipping a few seconds early or running to long. When you are trying to make something that people can actually download in less than an hour those extra seconds of footage can mean a lot.
So, anyway, I am finally kinda sorta happy with the results and now I go to save my clips. Hmmm, mpeg 1. What?! No mpeg 2? Isn't that required for making DVDs? I have no idea. I need newer software. Maybe I should try the Windows MovieMaker.
I get the files saved as mpegs and I watch them and I am horrified at the quality. They really suck compared to the originals. I dunno. There must be some settings that I can tweak or what not.
I'm just not that excited about making DVDs now. It seems like a horrible pain.
Maybe some software that is Y2K compliant will help. I'll keep you posted, because I know you are dying to know.
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I used Windows Movie Maker to create a movie of some still photo's and sound to go along with it. That part went fine. I tried saving it to the best quality it listed and every time it would crash the application. Finally I was able to save it to the second best quality and that was fine. But they have no way of making a DVD from it. Eventually I found an evaluation copy of Sonic's DVDiT software, runs for 14 days or 100 uses. I used that to create the DVD and it was fine. But the actual software would cost $300 bucks to buy. Not interested even though it works fine.
Found for linux afterwards (which was actually my preffered OS but could not find anything) Linux Video Maker. It will convert the video for you and create a dvd.iso for you. No menu's or anything but thats all I had needed... And its free :)
A windows program crashing? nah, come on now.
I haven't used linux in years. I think I got Red Hat 7.2 cds lying around somewhere though, hehe.
First of all, if you really want to do video editing, go buy yourself one of these:
http://www.apple.com/imacg5/
If all you really want to do is convert your video to DVD, just get a DVD recorder and feed the video stream directly to it. You won't be able to do a lot of editing, but you can cut scenes where you want to pretty easily and make a menu, etc..
You should also ask Grubert - I guarantee he's got something that would help you - if your machine can handle it.
you can cut scenes and add a menu with a dvd recorder?? i didn't know that.
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