Advice needed please, Video to DVD using a PC????

[Taz69]

Hiya all.

I have a pretty good spec pc, 2.4ghz, 768mb mem etc, I am looking at putting family and friends Wedding/Birthday Videos etc onto dvdr for them at first I thought the Toshiba RDXS32 dvd/hdd rec maybe the only way to go, but from what I have been spotting around etc it seems my pc is good enough to do the job instead, but where do I start, lol. I am assuming I will need a TV card of some sort, so I am looking for advice on parts I need and software please.

I will be transferring from Normal VHS video most of the time, but there may come a time that I get a camcorder in aswell, SVHS most of the time I expect, maybe sometimes a odd DV cam.

Also while capturing/transferring the footage to my pc, does this make the pc go really slow? as I do use it for work aswell although I do have other pcs around that I could use, just that I want to be prepared for every aspect.

Thanks in advance

Taz69

[MarkE19]

Yep, your PC is plenty good enough to do video editing. You don't say how much disk space you have so I'll let you know that to capture 1 hour of video will take approx 13Gb of disk space. You will then need somewhere around that amount again for editing and file conversion. So you should have at least 20-30Gb of free disk space. I would recommend that if your PC only has a single HDD you add a second that has no programs installed (that includes editing software etc) and is just used for the captured/edited video. If you already have 2 HDD then you can get away with it as longas you have the spare space.

To capture analogue video is more expensive than for purely digital. A good allrounf capture device that will give good results is 'Pinnacle Studio 9 AV/DV'. This comes with the highly rated Studio 9 software that does everything from capture to creating the final DVD (DVD burner sold separately ) and is fairly easy to learn and use. This will allow you to capture analogue via composite & S-Video and digital via firewire, so should be fairly future proof.

When doing editing on a PC you really should stop ALL other programs as it will take just about all the resources the PC has. This includes all antivirus/firewall etc and you should disable power save modes etc. A good program I use to stop antivirus etc is 'EndItAll' and can be downloaded for free - do an internet search for it.

Be aware that even with a good spec of PC, converting the AVI files to the final MPEG footage and then copying to a DVD disk will take several hours - and that it after you have done all the work to create the edits as required.

PC editing is a bit of a steep learning curve, but with a bit of practice you can get results that will give results that are far better than from any standalone DVD recorder, with the adition of menus, text, background music etc all fairly easy to add with the correct software.

Mark.