Bearing in mind I am looking for the best output with some nice editing does the below sound like a plan:

1. DV Capture with Pinnacle Studio 8
2. Edit Movie With Pinnacle Stuido 8 (as DV)
3. Encode finished DV/AVI with TMPEG Enc Plus to MPEG 2.0 (To get a better encoding than Studio 8)
4. Burn to DVD/SVCD.

Step 4 is the part I have not mastered yet? I dont have a DVD writer yet but hope to get on in the future so looking for the best picture quality which is SVCD currently. I would ideally like an authoring system which can create nice front ends.

I am assuming that I cant author a SVCD/DVD with Pinnacle 8 because I have done the encoding with TMPEG? TMPEG DVD author does not do SVCD I beleive and although I could probably use Nero I would like a nice easy interface to create front ends to the disk. I believe there is a ULEAD product which does both DVDs/SVCDs, please could you confirm what this is and will it do the job.

I would be interested in hearing people opinions, I must admit I like the idea of the complete package to do it all but I only have a trial version on Pinnacle at the moment so I cant testify to the quality of the MPEG 2 conversion.

Anybody have any better suggestions.

[mossmanfly]

Ulead DVD Movie Factory 2 is what you need. It does VCD, SVCD and DVD. You can edit the front end screen, menus, and add chapters etc. Editing is a bit limited as there are so many layouts and button styles available.

One thing with the product is that what you see on the PC screen seems to differ what the TV screen shows, i.e the edges seem cut off.

I havent used Ulead for VCD of SVCD but have done for DVD. One good thing is that when you encode via TMPGEnc you can encode it at a lower bitrate and get more time on a DVD. Been doing some AVI films and have about 4.5 hours on a DVD when it should be just 2 hours. Ok the quality isnt as good, but they werent amazing quality to begin with.

Thanks Mossmanfly, I am really going to have to sort out a DVD writer soon but the fact I only have 15 mins of footage (in total) i want to put on disk SVCD will suffice!

Time to go and buy Pinnacle 8 and get Ulead as well.

Thanks again