I've read related threads ... and your faq. You definitely know your s***, and I definitely don't know mine. This should be pretty easy ... I can capture movies to my pc. (mpeg2 and avi) and can capture up to 720x480 in both formats. I want to burn these files to dvd. How should I configure the capture to best ease the transition, ie is there a certain res that is required for this? certain audio format or speed? certain file format? (mpeg2 right?) I am a total n00b at this .. sorry. I dont own a dvd burner yet ... I wanted to make sure I would be able to do this first. But assuming I do get one, what additional software if any would I need to accomplish this. Right now I'm capturing 720x480 mpeg2 and in a perfect world would like to be able to throw that on a dvd for better portability (stand-alone players). Please let me know if I havent given enough info. Thanks, Steve
720x480 MPEG-2 should do just fine, if your encoder (hw-based I assume) produces MPEG-2 specs compliant video stream. And audio can be in various formats, including LPCM, MP2 (two, not three), AC3, etc.. LPCM is normally the easiest, basic 16-bit uncompressed WAV -- just remember that audio needs to be in 48kHz frequency, unlike CD, which is 44.1kHz. Otherwise you need to transcode your audio before authoring the DVD. On the other hand, if you want to _edit_ your videos (other than just cut/merge operations), then I strongly recommend that you use helluvalot of HDD and capture your videos using Huffyuv codec -- lossless compression -- do your editing using that and finally encode the results into DVD-compliant MPEG-2 using TMPGEnc or CCE. Then you simply need DVD writer (Pioneer A04, recommended and DVD authoring software, such as DVDIt, Maestro or Spruce.
