Hello everyone, nice to be amongst you all. I'm new to the camcorder game having recently bought the Sony '203' attracted by the 'record straight to DVD' adverts. I have shot some film (home Movies) i am searching a way to transfer from my recorded discs to full size DVD for storage and of course to free up the original discs. DVD+RW and DVD-RW. Trying to use the supplied software my DVD drive on PC keeps telling me to insert a recordable disc! I have tried all formats. Now I see from brousing internet that someone has had success using Womble Mpeg Video Wizard. Does anyone know if this works with Sony 8ins DVDs.
John B Roberts

[JohnG]

Moved to camcorders section.

[jomike]

Hi John, welcome to the forum.

I've also got the Sony DVD203 and this is how I transfer my video. I use Womble mpeg video wizard to open the .vob file(s) on the 8cm DVD and edit them. Then I save the edited file to my hard drive. I then use Nero 7 to burn a full size DVD because Womble does not do DVD burning.
The reason for using Womble is that when you save the edited mpeg (DVD format) file, it does minimal re-encoding to the file (which is already in DVD format), thus making it faster and you do not loose picture quality. You can use other editing programs but some will not recognise the .vob files on the DVD. A workaround is to copy the files on to the hard drive and rename the myvideo.vob file to myvideo.mpg.
Sony Vegas movie studio recognises the DVD files and imports them, edits them and burns the DVD all in one program but it takes a lot longer.
Forget about the Picture package software that comes with the cam, the only part that is in any way useful is the "viewing and handling pictures" part that saves the clips either over a USB cable or direct from the DVD as .mpg files.

HTH

Mike

[MarkE19]

Womble mpeg video wizard seems to be the favourite program on this forum for those editing DVD files. However, if all you want to do is an exact copy of the 8cm DVD to a full sized disc then there is no need for any editing programs. Just use Nero (or whatever burning program you have) and do a straight disc copy.
If you want to just combine the contents of a couple of discs onto one then you can rename the .VOB files to .MPG as already suggested and then use Nero etc to copy the multiple files onto a single disc.
If you do want to edit out the boring bits (the majority of it in my case ) then you do really want to look at buying Womble mpeg video wizard etc as this should give far better results than most of the standard editing programs as it is specifically designed for editing MPEG video, where most are designed for .AVI editing.

Mark.

[hon65]

guys, can you put the disc into DVD R and edit?. I have a panny dmres10 and will be buying a cam' next couple days. is this compatable, or do I need alternate format on the camcorder / what is the best format to buy if I want to edit/save..?