Camcorder video to DVD?

[Cool Texan]

What is the easiest way to do this? I have multiple tapes filled up from our camcorder, and would like to back them up on DVD's as well as make special home movies. I've tried to make brief video clips off the camcorder on my computer to email to family, but the compression was terrible so that a 15 second video clip was a gazillion megabyte file. What gives?

(cue Dave and Heavy Metal in 5....4....3....2.....)

[tnj8222]

wish i could help i have been curiouse about this as well..

[Chromaflage]

Send Raven1 a PM. That guy's got it dialed. I have a DVD Recorder - hook up my camcorder via RCA connectors and record directly onto DVD. Then I can rip the DVD with the computer, edit it, compress it, etc.

[Cool Texan]

Sent him a PM.

[SeaSparrow]

Let us know what you find out!

[JustCallMeDave]

Unless your time and sanity are of no value to you, go buy an external DVD recorder that has RCA inputs and do it that way.

Trust me. By the time you equip and configure your PC so that it can do the job RIGHT you will be out more money and time than just buying the standalone DVD recorder.

[RogueFishr]

any recomendations on a standalone unit? I have the computer setup and it is slooooooooow to use.

Thanks,
RF

[Bugle4em]

I have a DVD Recorder - hook up my camcorder via RCA connectors and record directly onto DVD. Then I can rip the DVD with the computer, edit it, compress it, etc.

[Raven1]

Been out of town, so I couldn't add my .

PM sent, I agree with Chrom & Dave

R1

[tnj8222]

nice dave thats what im gonna do!! to fry's i go!!!

[Thomas Gilg]

I have multiple tapes ... would like to back them up on DVD's as well as make special home movies.

What kind of Camcorder - VHS, 8mm, Hi8, MiniDV?

Many camcorder types are analog (VHS, 8mm, Hi8), thus you need an analog-to-digital (A/D) converter, and most do NOT perform well. Not only is the A/D converter weak, the resulting digital format is low resolution and lossy.

MiniDV and most camcorder type since are digital. MiniDV uses "Motion JPEG" at a rate of 15GBytes/hour to store the video on the tape, and using IEEE-1394, you can transfer this content as-is to your computer with zero degredation. There is no A/D step.

Hoping that you have MiniDV and can momentarily store 15GBytes/hour, you can then convert to MPEG-2 format for making DVDs, and to Windows Media 9 Video for online distribution.

For MPEG-2/DVD production, you really need to spend $200-$500 to get an editing/MPEG2-encoding/burning software application that produces something decent. Sony Video Vegas is my current recommendation. Even when you get a good application, only expect to get ~2 hours of video on a 4.7GB DVD+/-R/W disc if you want to maintain quality. 8Mbits/sec Constant Bit Rate (CBR) for the Video, or maybe 6Mbits/sec-avg 2Mbits/sec-min 8Mbits/sec-max 2-pass Variable Bit Rate (VBR).

For online distribution, I recommend Windows Media Video 9. Packages like Sony Video Vegas do allow you to output and control all the options of WMV9, and Microsoft's free package "Windows Media Encoder" does let you encode WMV9 videos with about as much control as possible. Many other free-inexpensive packages, including Microsoft Movie Maker, severely restrict encoding options, so you will struggle to get excellent output. If you want something between TV quality and DVD quality, expect to pick a bitrate of ~1.5Mbits/sec or better, and deal with 500MBytes/hour or better.

Lots of seemingly small videos you may see on the web have relatively simple image complexity, so they compress very well (1.5Mbps WMV9 looks great). Fishing videos with rough water, gravel beaches and trees in the background are complex from a compression standpoint, so they do not compress well (1.5Mbps WMV9 may look terrible). Also be aware that if the content you are encoding has noise or is of poor quality, that too can reduce compression.

There are some new compression techniques just now hitting the market, and hopefully it will improve the online distribution situation.

Thomas Gilg