I am using Win DVD to capture in AVI from my HC42 with an i-link cable. I have used its editing feature to create a DVD (seems very limited) and I have autherd the DVD. It took roughly an hour from start to finish to write the DVD. (2.21gbs) Their is a substantial quality loss and frame rate drop in some spots and the frame ins and outs are buggy. From what I can tell it says the file has been broken down into IFO, VOB, BUP files (I don't know what any of these are) Any help would be great, I really want to get my miniDVs on DVD so I can re-use the tapes.
The structure of a DVD indeed contains, IFO, BUP and VOB files, so that is correct. I have no experience with WinDVD for DVD authoring, but apparently either the encoder built into it is of limited quality or you are using low quality settings. I recommend to use a decent encoder to create your MPEG's. If you don't know what this is all about, check this article: http://www.digitalvideoclub.com/basics/tapetodvd.php