Making DVD copy of own video 29 January 2005 at 11:48PM in Techie Stuff 6 replies 771 views

mjenn5

Hello

I am looking for some help with how to make a dvd (or otherwise) copy of my own video which was taken with my 8MM camcorder (not digital).

I have a wintv program on my PC and have managed to do some copying but it takes up masses of Gb's and I don't know where to go from there.

This does not have copyright issues as it is my own videoing and I need to do this as my baby videos are starting to break up from over watching. (how sad am I watching my 5 children all day long putting them to bed and sticking on a baby video).

Any help on this would be most welcome.

Sheel

Hi

I'm going to move this over to the Techie board for you , where I hope you'll get the advice you need

regards , Sheel

mjenn5

Thank you Sheel for moving me. I wasn't sure where to post it.

shrek101

I did convert both video (VHS) and camcorder tapes to dvd via tv in through video card but I wasnt particularly happy with the quality.

So I decided last November to buy a Liteon 5006 dvd recorder about £170 and using the inputs convert the tapes from camcorder and VHS tape recorder onto dvd+rw disks.

You have various options to decide on what quality (bitrate) you can choose, ie 1hour, 2hour etc. I choose 1hour and once I recorder an hour and started again so like 3 dvd+rw disks for a 3hour tape. For the camcorder its 90 mins so again choose 1hour and added 30mins left at a later stage and 30min from next tape and so on.

Once I had done that I used a program called Ulead Video Studio to import the dvd as it will read the dvd and save small 5min chapters to computer hard disk. Unfortnately as you mentioned video takes a lot of hard drive space that is unvoidable unless you want poor quality video.

Then all I did was edit bits I didnt like on each small video and add them all together using Ulead Video studio then it will recorde to dvd, so I end up with roughly 50-55 minutes of video including chapters its very easy to sue but can take a little time.

You can of course get more onto dvd and record at a lesser bitrate say 2hours on to dvd+rw (these are rewritable disks) and to be honest it was slightly over kill on a higher bitrate I used, but quality is very good.

mjenn5

That all sounds good and I was wondering if I would need to go down the dvd recorder rout.

Would you say the wuality was drastically better using the dvd recorder rather than through the tv in.

Also do you know what format the films were in when you were ready to copy them from the pc to dvd as I am having a bit of bother getting my machine to transfer my films onto a dvd that my dvd player can read.

Thank you for your advice.

blinky

You should use the video composite in on the TV card as this will give a better picture quality.

Capturing video does take a large amount of HD space, the actual size depends on what video format you have told the software to use when capturing the file.

For tips the best places are https://www.videohelp.com and https://www.doom9.org

shrek101

The files importing from Ulead are mpeg2 so the only processing was after importing was to join the files together then using the builtin recorder to record to dvd-r+r, you get a professional job with the program.

There are other method ie convert the mpeg2 to divx/XViD (mpeg4) but you need the additional program and codecs installed and some loose in quality is top be expected although it can become less noticeable with some playinga round.