I have read tons of posts in this forum and posted quite a few questions too. Everyone has been patient and most helpful - especially Minion and Fugitive. Despite that and going through other video forums, my head is still swimming. I seem to understand the hardware & software ingredients (at least fundamentally), but can't seem to put the entire "process" together coherently. So I thought I would approach this from another angle. I sure there are other newbie's who have the same confusing dilemma. First, I an mot trying to convert store bought VHS movies to DVD. Maybe later but not now, I want to take my 16 years of home VHS videos (one tape for each year) and get them to DVD but not in a straight transfer. I have an RCA full sized camcorder connected to my ADVC100 box (S-video in) and the ADVC100 connected via firewire to my Dell 8100 1.5 GHz, 256 Mb Ram, with a brand new 120 Gb 7200 RPM dedicated hard drive for the video. My burner is a DVD Plextor 708A. So let's assume I have in my hand a VHS video tape containing about an hour & a half of several family events, for a particular year. Events are birthdays, kids schools stuff, family gatherings, etc., etc. I have with the tape an index card where I wrote down the date and what the event was that I shot. The date was recorded in the videos also. Now I pop this tape into my camcorder set in VCR mode and start capturing DV-AVI using products such as Scenalzer or WinDV. Now here is where it the "process" get murky. Should I capture the entire tape first and then break out the events later, or should I capture each event separately? I will want to keep some events on this tape together in the same order they were recorded, but others, like "Christmas at Grandma's" and "July 4th at Grandma's" I want to put on different DVDs (so I can give it to Grandma). I assume it would be best to capture "Grandma's events" separately and put those AVI files in a separate folder for editing/burning later. Yes? (If you are thinking this guy needs some common sense I won't be insulted). Now I want to add an opening title to each event (like "Timothy's Birthday 1996"), plus cut out any extraneous video footage from the beginning and/or end of each event, and perhaps cut some junk scenes out. I may wish to add some brightness to overly dark scenes, increase sharpness and employ whatever cleanup filters the software offers. Finally, I assume a transition is something that goes between each event or scene (so you don't get the blue screen when viewing dead (no record) spots). It seems it would make things flow smoother and more professionally on the final result so I would like to do this also. But before I ask "how" and "what" let me ask this....... I was lead to believe that one shouldn't edit an MPEG file since each edit cuts down on its quality. I understood that I should first capture my VHS videos to an AVI file, do all my editing, chapters, titles to the AVI file and when done, encode it to an MPEG files. So should I do all my editing, cutting, titles, transitions, etc. with the AVI files first? I can't afford expensive editing software like Vega or Adobe so what would you recommend at this point to keep it simple and stupid for this old geek? Most of the advice I have received here said to stay away from the all in one consumer packages but I'll ask about Sony Screenblast Movie Studio - any good? Editing software recommendations please to fit the above scenario. Let's now assume I have done my editing, titles, transitions (and I'm not in the loony bin) - is then when I encode (right word?) to MPEG2? The AVI files and now the newly created MPEG files are still on my hard drive at this point. So now I use something like DVDLab, TMPGEnc DVD Author or 3.0 Xpress or CCE Basic to get them to DVD format. Then I need something else to burn then to DVD. Is this all correct? If you are still with me - here on the final 3 "process" questions" When should I delete the AVI files (assuming disk space is not a problem) or should I archive them to DVD-/+RW's? Any reason to keep them around after making the MPEG files from them? What are "chapters". How and when are they made? This one really confuses me. Will the size of the MPEG2 files on my hard drive take up the same amount of space on the DVD disk or is there other overhead added in the burning process? If it weren't for this forum I would be totally in the dark. Many, many thanks in advance. JoeP
Hi, Joep42, well you seem to understand most of the "process" why don't you TRY it ? if you run into troubles, ask again...
