Best Software For Transfering Home video's to DVD

Merlin139

Help Guy's and Girls,

I have a PC and i can use the net and post bits on this site but I need some help!

I have tried the search facility and looked back on as many pages as possible without going blind.

I have many hours of Video stored on my PC from holidays over the last 3 years and fear that unless I transfer them to DVD soon may loose them for ever.

Last PC crashed about 2 years ago and lost 1500 plus photos from other holidays. Dust and dirt knackered the hard drive. was quoted about 2K to recover what was recoverable from Hard Disk but no Guarantee. Yes you could say should have learnt by now but everytime I go to buy a product to do this I get a recommendation then check it out from reviews and they seem to conflict one another.

Is there anyone out there that can recommend a product ( don't expect to get it free ) so am happy to buy it, that would meet my needs.

First thing I want to do is just get it all unedited onto DVD just incase Lightening does strike twice. Then edit it and copy to DVD, but unedited as quickely as possible

Grateful for any help

Merlin

wonderfullife_2

Hi
If you have Nero/Roxio that will do it, also DvdSanta is quite a good program, check it out, but not free.
http://www.dvdsanta.com/

Hope this helps

mikemoate

I'm not an expert in this and hopefully you will get some more informed replies. To start in respect of the unedited stuff, as far as I know you can just burn this to a DVD as a back up using any burning software that supports the DVD disc format. The burnt files won't play on a dvd player of course but at least they are backed up and can be copied back to the hard drive as needs be. In respect of editing etc you can go the expensive route of adobe et al or use windows movie maker to edit and then use a programme like proshowgold from http://www.photodex.com/ which is really easy to use and reasonably priced. Proshowgold will also do a lot of other things, slide shows, import music to shows and has cool transition effects and things like zooming and panning across photo's. You can get it on free trial initially to see if you like it.
Hope this helps

gringo2

a free downloadable programwww.videodvdmaker.com

crankup

I use TMPenc DVD Author for getting footage from files onto dvd.
http://www.pegasys-inc.com/en/product/tda_feature.html
I use it for little more than choosing the start and end of each clip, auto-chapers, create a dvd menu and prepare for DVD.

If you need to do more fancy editing and can afford it then Sony Vegas is amazing, probably does more than anything needed.

For more in-depth reviews and opinions check out http://www.videohelp.com - stacks of reviews and tutorials too.

pks00

I like using Nerovision Express (not Nero express - different product), and its perfect for me as it allows me to create my own menus, chapters, control my own bitrate (audio). You can also burn directly to disk or DVD. I prefer the disk option as I can then test properly what the resulting dvd is like.