[karen owen]

Can someone offer me some advice please?
Normally I trasnfer from my camcorder straight to a dvd ram via a recordable dvd player, however i realise that keeping the footage on dvd is not a good idea should anything happen to the dvd's.
I have windows movie maker, ulead and nero on our pc.

Yesterday I tried upoading from the camcorder to windows movie maker. Im a bit confused as to what to do with it once its there. Really I only want to edit the clips and then transfer them out to dvd to watch on the tv. How do I do this? do I need to make a movie, i so what format do I save it as to get it to play on the tv.

Sorry for so many questions

[redsox_mark]

It depends on what version of Windows you have. The XP version doesn't support MPEG2 (needed for DVD) or DVD authoring. Some versions of Vista do.


Or..

Ulead DVD Movie Factory is a simple to use package, to do basic edits and author a DVD.
http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satelli...=ukgoogmovfact

Or.. Sony Vegas is a powerful editor with a DVD authoring package included; more powerful than the above, but also more of a learning curve. Bargin here
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sony-Vegas-M...0671838&sr=8-1

[Mr Lazy]

I'm a bit concerned about your first point re keeping the footage on DVDs. Is the purpose of copying them to the PC then burning to DVD to make another backup? The DVDs you burn from your PC will last no longer than those burnt from the DVD recorder.

For backup purposes keeping the original miniDV tape plus two copies on DVD should be plenty enough (some would say overkill but it depends how precious the footage is). Alternatively hard disk space is dirt cheap these days so instead of one of the DVD copies I would put it onto an external hard disk, then you have 3 different copies on 3 different physical media.

[jaymac]

Or try for free first edit your footage then if you have xp export it as dv-avi then use Whatever you have say nero to burn to dvd . Better still get dvdflick its free and use that to burn to dvd after savibng with wmm. If you have vista I believe you can burn with wmm. For serious editing though as mark advised
http://www.dvdflick.net/
If you want to try the free route here's how
WMM open your footage cut out the bits you dont want add any transitions or adjust the soundtrack then choose save to my computer.On the next page settings tick the other settings box and from the drop down list choose Dv-avi Pal and then follow the prompts .. . If your footage is 16:9 be sure you have selected that in Tools>Options >Advanced before you start.
To use DVD flick open the file in it go to Project settings > burning then on the options that are given tick burn to disc then accept . Now click on create dvd and wait .Flick uses another programme called Imgburn to burn with which is excellent

[rickyt]

I've given up now on recording to DVD for myself as a backup medium .I've tried all makes of DVD's and still after 8/10/12 months they go blocky and eventually freeze in my DVD players .The latest ones bought last year were the Taiyo Yuden one's .............these are supposed to be the bees knees of DVD's .Time will tell .
What I have used for a few years now .......are media player external drives .Rip your DVD's .etc and just transfer the folder with your vobs in to the drive . These drives are capable of reading avi's, vob's ,mpeg's,divx files etc and just plug straight into a TV ,Plasma ,monitor etc and come with a remote control and all the required cables.Access the folder and your movies come up as thumbnails ,just click enter to play .Not only a great way to back up footage ,but also saves the need to put it all onto a disk to watch it on your TV. An ordinary external drive would be ideal for backup too ,but you cannot play it back on anything except a PC.HTH

[akkers]

This is my work-flow:
Transfer from camcorder to pc using firewire. File ends up as avi. Use premiere to edit and dub commentary. Output the finished poduct to avi file. Use tmpgenc to convert to mpeg2 and the tmpgenc authoring to build dvd image and burn to disc at 6x speed.

I use Ridata (silver) dvds and never have any problems with compatibility. These discs are rock solid and always work on 98% of dvd players.

Its a bit long-winded but it works and I get good quality. I am sure there other software out there that will do the whol thing.

[senu]

You can capture with one software
Edit with another
Output to DV AVI with yet another
and then encode to mpeg2
before using one last one to create a DVD.
This is often a long winded process which doesnt always guarantee the very best quality
That may be just as related to how good your original footage is

There are ( as discussed above) packages which have all the steps in one and are probably worth sticking with .. for now

Windows Movie Maker is free, and combined with Nero Vision you can capture edit output to DV AVI, then use Nero to Turn this into a DVD ( It wil encode to mpeg and do the DVD authoring seamlessly
I like Uleads Movie Factory: when it works ( which is most of the time) it simply does what it promises

Although seemingly free software exist, It is my experience that they may be limiting in, ease of use, features and output quality such that the paid for one may well turn out to be better VFM

Some software hold your hand to the point of distraction and others just put you off by their complexity
I don't think needlessly complicated software is any great advantage either though as you need may be far simper than all that
Most folk have their own favourites

Finally I echo some of the sentiments above. Although HDDs are by not means infallible.. I would still rely on them more that DVDs .. even the very best , stored very well and recorded in optimal conditions can let you down whem you least expect it
Whilst I dont use divx ect, I do keep ISO images ( or nero equivalent : *.nrg) of DVDs projects which I can then turn to DVDs iif need be and they play perfectly well
I also can mount them as virtual discs to play on Nero Image drive ( and similar programs)
Finally outputting as images is a painless way of producing multiple copies

Many of the packages have trial downloads, and are learnable . Even the seemingly harder ones to use have a "newbee" mode
Good luck in your search