A Good Domestic DVD Writer

[porto99]

My PC (1.67GHz with 120GB hard drive) is feeling the strain with video edition and creating a DVD when finished. It takes about 8 hours for ~ 45 min DVD and sometimes it failes! Using Premier Pro for the editing and DV creation.

I have been writing back to the miniDV tape then recording to VHS tape.

However someone suggested that you can get a standard domestic DVD player/writer so that you can record direct from the playback from the miniDV or television.

Is this a good way to go until I replace my PC next year.

What are the options/models to look for (UK PAL).

Many thanks,

Andy.

 

[MarkE19]

If you already have a DVD writer in the PC and are editing the footage on a PC anyway then I see no advantage to getting a standalone DVD recorder to make your DVD's. At least on the PC you can save a little time by burning at more than 1x which is all the standalone recorder will do. Also the quality on the PC burner should be better as the standalone (assuming it has a DV port) will need to do the MPEG conversion in real time, and this is never as good as a good quality encoder on the PC. If there is no DV input then the quality difference could be quite large as you will need to convert the footage to analogue and play into the recorder to convert back to digital.
The standalone recorder will save time though as you will not need to convert the footage from .AVI to .MPG which is definately the longest bit of creating a DVD on a PC. But I see this as the only real advantage of going this route. However this would not really be an advantage to me as I just leave the PC to do the file conversion over night or when I go out for the day, so when I get home/up it has all been done.

Mark.

 

[porto99]

Thanks Mark for your reply.

One problem I have on the PC is I keep getting errors when burning to DVD; I do this overnight. Small clips are OK (small < 35 mins), but with a 60 min video dont seem to be able to burn to DVD. -> Unknown Error Occured.

I assumed that it was disk space (maybe needed defrag) or overrun etc.

Thats why this notion of domestic DVD writer seems good.

On my PC I can only get around 25 GB of hard drive available.

ANy suggestions/comments.

Andy.

 

[jayuk1973]

Whilst i am not an expert, i have a little knowledge of dvd writing (no i dont mean illegal copies lol) I can see your dellema i recently upgraded from a pc that took 8 hours to do a dvd to my current one (p4dual 400gb 2gbmem and a decent graphics card) which takes about 45 mins, i too looked at a standalone player, however look at the cost of a stand alone writer at least £200 for one that is worth using my new pc was only £400, is it worth it ???

Have you looked at upgrading your old pc instead 200gb hard drive £70 cause for about £200 you could have an all singing all dancing PC

Jay

 

[porto99]

Thanks for your post. Yes did think about a PC upgrade, but for various reasons decided to wait until next year.

Some of the reasons are;

1. Type of memory 1/2 GB but to go to 1GB would have to throw the 1/2 GB away.
2. Have a 120 GB drive, and lots of other programs on it.
3. I think need to change the motherboard and memory and graphics card - too many changes, better with a new PC.


Also I do have a need for the DVD recorder for the TV system.

Not to worried about the quality, so any suggestions please.

 

[MarkE19]

1. Type of memory 1/2 GB but to go to 1GB would have to throw the 1/2 GB away.

Well I've not bought any RAM for a while now but would think you could get 1Gb or perhaps even 2Gb of RAM for under £100 or even stick with the 512 as this is enough, just more is better.

2. Have a 120 GB drive, and lots of other programs on it.

A second 120Gb HDD for under £50 I would think. Even a 300Gb HDD is around £100 now and that would give you loads of space for video editing.

3. I think need to change the motherboard and memory and graphics card - too many changes, better with a new PC.

If it aint broke, don't fix it!
If the processor and MoBo are working fine then you may as well stick with them for now. Graphics are not needed to be upgraded as basic cards will do all you need for editing with consumer programs.

So for around £150 you could upgrade the PC to be more than good enough to edit video - this is assuming the PC is of reasonable spec to start with. What specis it? TBH I would think adding just another HDD would be enough to get going. More RAM could be added at a later date and then this could be put into the new PC you build next year.

Mark.

 

[porto99]

I did post this problem a month or so and was advices to upgrade my hard drive. I have now done this.

I have a 120GM Primary drive, was 80GM
and a 200GB Secondary drive, was 120GB.

The 200GB drive has this new project on it and nothing else - but still I get this error.

I have been using Premier Pro 7 to produce my DVDs (playable on a domestic DVD player).
But when the AVI file is over 8 GBs I get the error:

Code:
Could not complete the test command because: DVD err(DVDErr, 143365)

I can produce a DVD for a 20 mins piece of film.

I am fed up as it take all night then end up with this error.

I did consider buying a domestic DVD rewriter to overcome this problem but was advised to sort out the disk drives first.

My PC is a 1.67GHz with 512MB RAM.

Can someone please advice a way forward; either get rid of this error or suggest a domestic DVD rewriter (load minDV to PC -> Edit and save back to miniDV and then use the domestic DVD rewriter.

SWuggestions please!

 

[shoehorn]

my new pc was only £400

Sounds like a good price - is it any good and where's it from?

 

[emocean]

I understand your frustration with burning DVD on a PC and although I have now upgraded my computer I also bought a Pioneer DVR-3100 domestic DVD Recorder. It has DV IN/OUT so I just edit my project on the PC, output to tape and then plug the camera in to the Pioneer. It makes the DVD in real time and takes about 2 minutes to finalise the disc at the end. This is much faster when you are making single copies than using the PC. The Pioneer has since been deleted from their range but I'm sure the later models will be as useful.
When making multiple copies I use the PC and go down the pub for a while. Each has it's own merits and if speed is the issue then the PioneerDVD recorder wins every time. I understand that the latest model has a built in hard drive and that you can make multiple copies with menus. The other benefit of the DVD recorder is that the discs are read by every other domestic player that I have tried.