A newbie question that may have been asked, but am ready to slit my wrists. I simply want to take my edited home movie that I have already imported from my DV Camera, edited, and added effects and burn it to DVD so I can send it to family. I can make VCD's, but I have more video than I can fit on one, and would prefer to have it on DVD and in higher resolution. It looks like I am missing an MPEG2 in the version of Nero Express that came with my computer ? I thought a Nero upgrade was the ticket, but I have been reading the reviews - Nero 6 is rubbish, Nero 6.6 is rubbish, Nero 7 is rubbish .... How can I get my 100 minutes of edited home movies burned onto a DVD so Grandma can easily watch them ? She doesn't have a computer, but can run the DVD player as good as she can run the coffee pot. I just want to do this simple thing without having to get a PhD in digital video formats. Thanks.
You've already transferred the DV and edited it. Do you still have it saved on your hard drive in DV AVI format? If so you just need to get software to encode the AVI file to DVD compliant MPEG-2. I like TMPGEnc. You can download a free version of it here: http://www.tmpgenc.net/e_main.html MPEG-1 encoding with it is free and you can do MPEG-2 for 30 days. Thre are also other programs like Canopus Procoder or Main Concept which do the same thing. When you encode the file to MPEG-2 you'll need to set the bitrates and such. Since your footage is 100 minutes it will probably be best to use Variable Bit Rate. Here's a link to a bitrate calculator I use often which works well: http://dvd-hq.info/Calculator.html You input the legth, audio bitrate and such and it will give you exact figures to use and I'ts very accurate. Once you've gone through that and have your MPEG-2 file you need a program to author a DVD. I think Nero can make basic DVD's, but I've never used it so I'm not sure. If you have it then you'll probably know. If now you need to get a DVD authoring program like DVD Lab or TMPGEnc DVD Author. You can find a link to many different programs here: http://www.videohelp.com/tools?s=2#2 I recommend videohelp.com if you don't already know about it. There's a wealth of information there and it's where I learned almost everything I know.
Thanks ... I have the original video stored in wmv format, which is what Picture Project, the software that came with the camera, stores imported video as (input via the firewire connection). I was able to convert .wmv to a .mpg file, using Nero Express 5.5 and could create a VCD. I did play with some MPEG2 converters, and I believe the TMPGEnc program was one of them, but couldn't create a DVD. Thanks for the tips.
I know a bunch of people don't like pinnacle, but I have pinnacle 9.4.3 and I have made about 10 DVD's in about 1 months period of time and they have all turned out great!!
Wantfries, to start with, you're doing one thing that is not good: capturing it to wmv. That is a heavily compressed format. Always capture to DV-AVI to get the original quality on your system. Next edit in that format and as the last step encode, author and burn. Here's an articele that explains the whole process step by step: http://www.digitalvideoclub.com/basics/tapetodvd.php
