This has been mentioned numerous times on the forum .........................converting mini-DV to DVD .The best way if you need to edit , add transitions/effects/background music is to use a Firewire card/port connected to your camcorder .Software on you PC/laptop will capture the signals .This is done in real time and uses up quite a bit of hard drive space in the process ...............12/13GB per hour .Once finished ,you can import the DV file into your editing program ,I've always used Pinnacle in the past , this has always made a good job of capturing ..........no dropped frames and will quickly and easily allow you to edit ,add effects etc ,then put the finished file directly to DVD. Lots of editing programs to use , I do like Vegas by Sony ,but theres Magix ,Serif Movie plus and a host of others .
That said , by far the easiest way to transfer your tape footage to DVD is to use a DVD/HDD recorder . Simply connect your camcorder to the device and record the signals to the HDD ,then you can do basic editing if you want then write back from HDD to DVD , finalise the disk and it will play on any player . My Liteon recorder has a Firewire port to make it easier to connect . With the tape now on DVD , you have several options , you could rip the disk using software on your PC/laptop to a file that can be imported into your editing package ,thus allowing you to edit , add effects etc ...............then write back to DVD as the finished work.
Another way , if you just need clips of your footage is to use certain software , I have used Womble in the past . This allows you to capture parts of the DVD in real time , as it will read .vob files .It will save the files as mpegs or avi's .Then you can import these clips into your editing program .
Any connection between camcorder and pc/laptop will be a time consuming operation ,the editing , then encoding the file to a DVD , so be prepared to spend quite a bit of time at it . Good luck .