Going straight from DV to DVD

sfisher100 wrote on 7/22/2005, 7:46 PM

My brother in law game me about 10 tapes he wants straight transferred to DVD. I have made many movies with vegas where I import the video as a avi, do my editing, then use DVD architect to make the DVD.

Is there a more streamlined way to do this since he doesn't want any editing? As always, thanks in advance!
SF

Comments

John_Cline wrote on 7/22/2005, 8:35 PM

See my post in this thread:

http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=403457&Replies=7

John

johnmeyer wrote on 7/22/2005, 8:38 PM

There are many programs that will capture directly to MPEG-2, such as the Mainconcept MPEG codec, as well as some of the Sonic and Ulead products. I think some of them will do some automatic, rudimentary DVD authoring using the MPEG-2 files so that your workflow is almost neglible. I haven't used these myself, so someone else will have to chime in and give you specific recommendations. If you don't get any leads, go to the Sonic and Ulead sites and look around.

farss wrote on 7/22/2005, 8:41 PM

Also you can get a hardware mpeg-2 gizmo pretty cheaply, seems the resulting mpeg-2 files are DVDA compaitble which gives you the best of both worlds.
Relying on the CPU to do the mpeg encoding in RT strikes me as being a good way to have things go wrong. The little USB box was discussed here recently and it was only aroung AUD 150, might even get one myslef for those quick and dirty jobs.
Bob.

B.Verlik wrote on 7/22/2005, 9:08 PM

You might look into "Instant DVD" by ADS. I don't own this either, but I"ve seen a couple of DVDs made with this and they looked pretty good. (mind you, these were VHS transfers, so I didn't get a chance to see what Digital video looks like yet. But they did look a lot better than I expected.) It's a real time mpeg encoder using USB 2.0 and can, if you'd like, capture even higher than you can use on a DVD. (15,000,000)

johnmeyer wrote on 7/23/2005, 8:22 AM

Another solution I forgot to mention are the ATI cards. My ATI Radeon 8500 DV (now obsolete, but I'm sure they have a newer version) can capture and record analog video in MPEG-2 format. The audio can be captured in PCM format, so it can be pretty compatible with DVD players. You still have to author the DVD, however.

Chanimal wrote on 7/23/2005, 9:23 AM

I have used my ATI All in Wonder 9700 to pull DV or VHS in via the SVHS or RCA cables and convert to Mpeg2, then take it straight to DVD (using the "non menu" option of DVD Architect).

I also happen to have two Panasonic DMR-E75V DVD/VCR recording machines (picked up both at a pawn shop). I purchased these when I had a job to drop 8 hours of DV to DVD so the internal marketing team could watch the DVDs on their PCs.

I hook my SVHS cables via my recorder directly to it and can burn a DVD directly, or drop it to VHS tape in real time. The price for these has dropped dramatically--if you need this capability for other things, it might be worth it to invest.

Other units accept firewire input, so you don't have to use SVHS.

If the tapes are VHS, I don't even touch my PC--I put the VHS in one side, the DVD in the other and press "record". It records in real time. All I have to do is select "finalize' and the DVD plays on the standard DVD player.

By the way, Panasonic had the best quality according to the review, but the instructions for going from SVHS to DVD are terrible--keep the manual close by.

TheHappyFriar wrote on 7/25/2005, 2:32 PM

I use an ATI AIW 9600 & I took all 98 episodes of the TV show "News Radio" straight from Panasonic DVCPro to Mpeg-2 ~4.5mbs and you can't even tell the difference.

It's pretty good, especially as you can get an ATI AIW 7500 for CHEAP & it has all the mpeg/wmv/avi recording features that the later models have (the software won't though).