DV to DVD encoding

[idi banashapan]

I've just got myself a DVD re-writer and can now start to make DVD's of my daughter from my digital camcorder (bless!!!!).

Does anyone have any tips on encoding rates / settings to use for encoding the captured video ready to make a DVD? Do I need to take into consideration DVD displayable resolutions / bit rates, etc???? (sorry - I'm showing my naivety on this subject)

Any form of help would be very....... well.... helpfull!!!!!!!!

Thanks in advance.....

[SMHarman]

The way I've gone is

Editing with Windows Movie Maker 2 free download from msft. As good as iMovie for the mac IMHO.

This will (with the aid of a firewire card) enable you to stream the tape to your HDD and edit it, then save the edited AVI back onto your HDD. Keep the tapes as masters - its the cheapest and most effecive way.

Then the AVI file goes in to TMPGEnc Plus. Depending on how you want to fill the DVD. Personally 30 mins of my son is enough for any sane person, so I encode at 8000 CBR. You can also get TMPGEnc to create a MP2 sound stream (make sure the setting is set to best) or if you want to author a technically correct DVD use GoldWave (or a free alternative) to create a PCM audio stream at 1500 bps.

Both of these are then put into TMPGEnc Author which does a nice simple job of creating menus with moving images, backgrounds etc and burning.

So I've bought the TMPG suite for $99 (there is a 30 day eval) and am on eval with Goldwave. MMM2 is free.

I've also found that burning slow is beneficial, especially on cheap media.

www.dvdrhelp.com is a great resource. Almost as friendly as this place.

Any more questions ask. I only got my recorder 3 weeks ago so still a newbie and willing to help.