[PAUL HUTTON]

Hello there,I am a complete novice at editing on a PC,and would like to edit home movies using Windows Moviemaker 2 which comes with XP.I understand that i cannot actually burn the finished movie to a dvd using WMM2,but would have to use a third party disc burning software.I happen to have on my PC a disc burning software called "mydvd" by Sonic.Is "mydvd" and" WMM2" compatable with each other,and if so what problems might i encounter please.I would then like to play the finished product on my dvdr which is a Panasonic dmr-eh50,which i believe is capable of playing back any format.
Thanks,
Paul

[MarkE19]

MM2 is a great editing program, but as you say it wont create any form of disc output. Therefore to create a DVD you need to capture the footage as AVI files. Do the editing and then save the timeline as AVI.
You then load the AVI edited file into your DVD authoring program and create the disc from there. Sorry, but I have never used mydvd so can't advise how to do it.

A great resource for learning about MM2 can be found Here.

Mark.

[PAUL HUTTON]

Hi Mark,you must have been keeping an eye out for my next plea for help,as i seem to remember you replied to my last request for advice on firewire cards.First of all ,when i have my camera playing and i click the "start capture"button all looks fine.When i click "stop capture" ,the camera stops playing and the image in the preview window pauses,and i have to start it playing again with the start camera button on the screen.Is this normal do you know.

Paul

[MarkE19]

Originally Posted by PAUL HUTTON

Hi Mark,you must have been keeping an eye out for my next plea for help,as i seem to remember you replied to my last request for advice on firewire cards.

Is that a polite way of saying that I have no life other than scanning through this forum - Well it may be true but theres no need to rub it in

Originally Posted by PAUL HUTTON

First of all ,when i have my camera playing and i click the "start capture"button all looks fine.When i click "stop capture" ,the camera stops playing and the image in the preview window pauses,and i have to start it playing again with the start camera button on the screen.Is this normal do you know.

This is perfectly normal with a camcorder connected via firewire. The software is designed to have full control over the cam when connected. This is so it is simpler and you only need to use the buttons on screen, rather than controlling both the cam and software individually. Just leave the cam in VCR mode and let the software do the work.
If you do want to manually control the cam (but why would you ) then you can deselect the 'device control' box in the project setup.

Mark.

[PAUL HUTTON]

Hi Mark,no not at all,i was kinda hoping it would be you who would reply,as i have noticed you reply to a lot of posts, have a broad spectrum of knowledge and seem to know what you are talking about.I understand what you are saying about being able to control the camera through the screen ,I just expected the camera to carry on playing ,after i have clicked the" stop capture"button to save you having to click the "play" button again. ,but any way ,on to more important things.In your first reply you say,save the time line as an avi file ,then load it into "mydvd" to be able to burn it to disc.Does "mydvd"then convert the avi files again into mpeg2 files in the process of burning.I am a bit confused because i read somewhere that avi files are low quality compared to mpeg2 files,so if the movie is saved as an avi file does this mean "mydvd" is recieving a lower quality version of the movie,which infers a drop in picture quality.If this is the case ,could the time line be saved as a mpeg2 file then load it into "mydvd",or am i worrying for nothing.
One other thing i am unsure about is,right at the beginning of the capture process,when wmm2 asks what format i want to save the files as ,ie .wmv or avi,which should i choose t avoid unecessary conversions later on.One final thing is how do i determine/match which recording speed to use when doing the final burn to disc,ie to be compatable with the disc speed recording capabilties and the pc drive unit recoding speeds.
Thanks again,
Paul

[MarkE19]

Well to answer the first 2 questions in 1:
AVI is the same format as is recorded to a DV tape. Therefore you should caspture and edit the files as AVI, and there will be no compression or conversion of the file throughout the process.
AVI as mentioned above is the same quality as recorded onto DV tape, and therefore is as good as it gets - which is very good. Converting to MPEG-2 to burn to DVD will compress the files to fit onto a small DVD disc. 1 hour AVI is about 14Gb, 1 hour of MPEG-2 is anything up to about 4.7Gb (can be compressed more to get longer onto a DVD).
MM2 can not compress the video to MPEG-2, but any DVD authoring program will do it for you and ensure that it stays DVD complient.
When burning a DVD disc you should burn it at the slowest speed to maximise its compatability for playing on a standalone player. Faster burns often become less compatable, but the max speed you can use will take trial & error to find. As I only have a 4x burner I don't tend to get too many coasters.

Mark.

[thebrummy_one]

Mark,
Looks like you've got another fan One more thing I've experienced when burning discs is to buy named brands. This will increase your chances of successful burns. I once brought a stack of DVD-r form Maplin, only 1 in every 5 or 6 worked false economy to the extreme.

[PAUL HUTTON]

Hello again MarkE19,I thought i would let you know what progress i have made.I have made a simple home movie about 40 minutes long,capturing the footage in avi,then saved it as a project in avi,which took about 10 minutes.I selected all the options which would ensure no loss of quality throughout the process.I was a bit worried when i previewed what i had saved as it looked a bit grainy.I dont know whether the next step was needed,but i then saved the whole movie to the HD as avi ,still on the best quality options to make sure it played ok on my dvdr player.This seem to be needed so that "mydvd" could then use the saved movie to start burning it to dvd.It was a good job i had read other comments on this forum about how long this next stage took ,because it took about an hour,going through several rendering processes, before finally burning it to disc.
I was a bit surprised that it finalized the disc when it had finished,which i hadnt told it to do,because i wanted to add a bit more to the disc.Do you or anybody else know how i could leave the disc un-finalized.The time line in wmm2 showed the project to be 40 minutes long and left 2.07 Gb on the disc when it had finished.Does this seem about right do you think! . When i played it back on my dvdr player i was very impressed with the quality of the picture,being just as sharp as if i had hooked up the camcorder straight to the tv.
Paul

[MarkE19]

Good to hear that you are getting good playable DVD's

TBH I'm not surprised that the software finalised the disc as otherwise it would not have played in a DVD player. I don't know your software, but guess the best way to be able to add more footage at a later date would be to use RW discs and reauthor the files each time.
The amount of used space for each project will be different depending on the quality settings & amount of information in the picture. 40 minutes with around half the disc used seems to be about right to me though.

Mark.