New to DV, DVD

[Kylie Wilson]

Hello I have a canon MV 530i and a Pioneer DVD Burner, I would like to know the following

1. Good programs to capture DV

2. What programs I need to burn to DVD

3. What format should I use for the best quality?

Any information would be greatly appreciated

Kylie

[Ken Tanaka]

Hello Kylie,
Are you using a PC or a Mac?

[Kylie Wilson]

PC

[Ed Smith]

Are you looking at editing your material. Or straight capture then burn?

If editing material look at Premiere (Comes with DVDit) or Vegas (DVD option)
If straight capture and you do not want any fancy menu structures etc. Sonic My DVD will do the trick (Comes free with A05).

All programs above will need a Firewire capture card.

If you want more complex DVDs i.e. motion menus, etc etc etc. Go for Sonic ReelDVD. You will need to by a progam that can capture and edit material i.e Premiere and also a graphic appliction like Photoshop.

What do you mean by best quality?
When creating an MPEG2 stream you can choose what quality you would like from 3Mbits to 8Mbits and higher. All will give you higher quality than VHS. 6,7,8Mbits will give you the same if not better quality than DV.

Hope this helps,

Ed

[Kylie Wilson]

Hi Ed, Yes I will want to capture then edit, I will be purchasing Adobe Premiere soon and I have Adobe Photoshop as well. Can you add menu structures with Premiere?

I'm really quite unsure about what format to use, I would like to use the best quality I can use. I take it Mpeg2 is the format you use to burn to dvd? What about sound files? Do they burn within the mpeg2 format as well?

As you can tell I have never done this before with DVD and I'm asking many questions so I do not waste money and time wrecking DVD's.

Once you have the DVD in the correct format what do you use to burn? I have nero will that work?

Thanks

[Ed Smith]

Hi Kylie,

Adobe Premiere is used to capture the material from your tape, edit and then, export what you have edited as an MPEG 2 file which A dvd authoring program needs to create a DVD. It also exports the audio file seperate, which can be either PCM (WAV - best quality) or MPEG Layer 1 audio if using PAL.

Adobe Photoshop is used to create the menus and the buttons

If you want to create a menu structure then it is best to use an DVD Authoring Package made for the job. If you are buying the full version of Premiere 6.5 (I also believe Pro), you will get Sonic DVDit. This package will enable you to create menus import your videos and burn to your A05. If you want to create more complex menu structures and motion menus (Video in the back and buttons in the front) Then I would suggest you purchase Sonic Reel DVD.

If you are purchasing Premiere with Hardware I would suggest to buy the Matrox RTX 100 extreme with Reel DVD. This comes with a capture card thats gives real-time DV IN/OUt and analogue IN/OUT. It also comes with Reel DVD and DVDit and realtime transitions and effects. In the UK it costs about £800. However your PC would need to be highly speced.

The only way to get the result you want is to try. It might be worth getting hold of DVD-RW disks so you can try over and over again untl you are happy.

So to answer your Q's:
Can you add menu structures with Premiere?
> No. You use photoshop to create still menus. However if creating Motion menus you would use Premiere to create the motion part.

I take it Mpeg2 is the format you use to burn to dvd?
> YES

What about sound files?
> As mentioned above they are seperate from the video in either PCM or Mpeg layer 1. The sound file is seperate so you can add multi language audio, and it has become the norm when creating DVDs

Do they burn within the mpeg2 format as well?
> THe DVD authoring program merges them together during the buring process.

I have nero will that work?
> I have not used Nero so can not comment. I use ReelDVD in order to create and burn my projects.

Hope this helps,

Ed