burning a family video on dvd, help.

[cillian4]

Hi, I recently use my camcorder for family video I now like to burn it
on a dvd format but I don't have any idea how to do this :slurp: .

 

[Merc14]

What kind of camera are you using? Does it record to miniDV tapes, an internal HDD or cards? You'll need a software program on your PC to capture and encode your raw footage and the a DVD burner to make the actual disk.

As an example (and I'm a noob at this too so bare with me):

I have a Canon ZR400 video camera that records on miniDV tapes. I hook up the camera to my PC through a Firewire (ieee 1394a) connection and capture the video using Roxio Media Creator (note: Firewire is required to capture the video because you must capture at real time ie. 1 hour of footage takes 1 hour to download to PC, and you need the throughput of Firwire. USB isn't wide enough). Roxio basically controls the camera as it downloads the video to my PC and encodes it for editing. The miniDV tape is reusable but I never record on a tape more than once as I use them as my permanent archive.

After the capture is complete I open another program inside Roxio Media Creator called DVD Builder and start to edit the raw footage I just downloaded. When I'm happy I put a blank DVD R in the burner and tell Roxio to "Burn a DVD"). It defaults to NTFS format for US players but you can specify PAL for overseas. When complete it will play in any DVD player.

The raw footage and other stuff is stored on the HDD of the PC. These take up a lot a space so a lrge HDD is a necessity. Also, I'd suggest that, at a minimum, you have a 2.6GHZ level CPU (AMD 2600 minimum), 1GB of RAM, a 6600/800 level video card and 80GB HDD. 3.0GHZ (or equivalent AMD) level CPU, 2GB of RAM, 6800 video card and 160GB HDD are preferred. Also, for many digital video camera a firwire connection is required. You can get a PCI card with firewire embedded for $15 at Newegg.

 

[The_Maestro]

If your camera is digital you will need a firewire capture card. Most laptops come with firewire nowadays so do some desktop PC's otherwise you will need a PCI firewire card, I would reccomend Pinnacle, worked very well for me so far.

If your camera is a analogue camera you will need to get a capture card for your PC. I would then suggest using a S-Video cable to go from your camera to PC as it will be better quality. With firewire your software will control the PC, on analogue you will still need to push play manually on the camera

If your capture card does not come with software generally windows movie maker can be used to capture the video (not ideal but will do).

When it comes to DVD burning, if the software that you have has got the ability to do it then use your existing software, otherwise the new nero also has DVD authoring software built in and can obviously burn DVD's

Hope that helps

 

[cillian4]

Thanks

I have a digital camera and I use the SD CARD. I order a pinnacle software I waiting for it to arrive now
hope it do the trick I did have a software that came with the camera
but it does'nt : let me save the video in dvd format.

 

[The_Maestro]

Pinnacle should do the trick. when you select the option to render it has a option to burn directly to DVD. Enjoy

 

[TPH]

Pinnacle should do the trick. when you select the option to render it has a option to burn directly to DVD. Enjoy

Isnt it possible to connect your Video Machine or Camcoder to your tv card on your pc and copy the footage to your harddrive with half the hustle

 

[mailpup]

Except it still has to be converted to a DVD format.

 

[TPH]

Except it still has to be converted to a DVD format.

But nero 6 will do that for you

 

[mailpup]

Well, ....okay. But that was my point. You still need something to convert it, such as Nero or similar software.

 

[The_Maestro]

Pinnacle Studio software will capture, edit and convert to DVD.