Getting started in DV.

[BFG]

Hi,

I wonder if anyone can help.

I have a Canon MV750i. Because it's digital, I assumed it would be as easy to get media off as with a digital camera.
It's digital right? Drag and drop.

I'm a techie person, so I can work this out. But, it's a minefield and I don't have the time (I work 16hrs a day, and my weekends are full). Plenty of info on the AV forums, but it's full of jargon. I have a lot of respect for people who are "into" DV, and as a hobby, they have the time to spend researching and refining and trying out various things.

But, I'm into property renovation, motorcycles and martial arts - there simply isn't the time for me to get "into" DV. I bought the camera to enhance my other hobbies - but it's just a burden. To me the point of anything DV is what's in front of the lens, not what's behind it . At the moment, using the Camcorder is easy, but through frustration I just end up with a stack of tapes I can do nothing with except watch them on the Camcorder connected to a TV.

Ideally I would like to get my film off the camera, edit it up and have it on tape inside a day, with only 1 hour of my time + some processing time. With a digital still camera, I can go from shoot to a good quality finished print in 5 minutes flat. I would like to be able to something similar with the DV camera, though I do appreciate it will take a little longer.

I have firewire and a DVD writer on an AMD 2400. I have tried various software, but all of them require arcane knowledge to get them to work satisfactorily.

Window Movie maker results in awful image quality - so that was ditched early on.

Adobe premier is overkill, but the demo was OK until it kept crashing. Bought 1Gb ram, didn't crash as much, but still need huge amounts of research to get quick results.

Pinnacle Studio 9. Horray!! This is a doddle to use. I used the captured AVIs from my trial with Adobe, put together a movie in about 1hr. Right, now click "Make Movie". To experiment, I asked for an AVI file, which I will then put on DVD with another package.

I rejected several codec settings because they said I would go over a 4Gb limit. I chose one which would let me click forward (can't remember which) and started. 24 hours later, the machine is about 15% through, and has already created a 15Gb file - (???). I gave up and cancelled. Viewed what the machine had done so far - the image quality was worse than movie maker.

And now to the point. I'm sure that everyone has their favourite method - but, Is there any resource on the net which will give DV to DVD in baby steps, resulting in a grain free / line free edited movie on a DVD. I tried the FAQ, but too much jargon. On page one I had to look up "striping".

I need a quick start guide! So I can concentrate on the stuff in front of the lens. Who knows, it might light a fire about what's going on behind the lens - but at the moment the spark is going out.

Any help greatly appreciated.

[klr10]

If you're looking for simplicity I would recommend the Ulead products - i think Movie Factory is very simple to use.

[klr10]

They have free trial downloads at www.ulead.com

[MarkE19]

First thing to take note of is that the quality that you see on a PC monitor is not what you see on a TV screen. Therefore I would suggest you stick with MS Movie Maker 2 as the quality from cam to PC is 100%. A great resorce for learning MM2 is www.papajohn.org
MM2 will do the capture & editing, but can not create a DVD. So what you need is a program to create the disc - called authoring! As suggested Ulead DVD Movie Factory 3 is cheap (£25-£30) and very easy to use. Load your saved file from MM2, add a menu and chapters and away it goes and creates the final DVD disc.

If you need any more advise or 'jargon' explained then feel free to ask here. I tend to be on the forum just about every day (to the displeasure of my managers) along with many others that should be able to help. I do work in IT, so can get carried away at times with 'jargon' so don't be afraid to ask me to put it in another, simpler form if you don't understand.

Good luck,
Mark.

[BFG]

Many thanks for the excellent replies.

Originally Posted by MarkE19

First thing to take note of is that the quality that you see on a PC monitor is not what you see on a TV screen. Therefore I would suggest you stick with MS Movie Maker 2 as the quality from cam to PC is 100%.

I may have some other problem then. I was comparing the image quality side by side with the same footage during capture, and also with other camcorder movies copied to me as AVIs

This would suggest the rendering is at fault, but of course it may not be as simple as that.

it may display at a lower frame rate/ quality when editing then full quality
at the final record.

Nick