I have about 7 or 8 hour long miniDV tapes from my digital camcorder I would like to download, edit, and compile into a little homemade movie. I want to do stuff like ad music, special effects (slow motion, fast motion, reverse motion video), subtitles or scene titles, etc. and then compile it into a 1-2 hour dvd. I'd like to make a fairly simple menu that allows you to play the movie (maybe witha still shot from the movie in the backgroup) and skip to a couple of scenes. I'm wondering what software other than Adobe Premier 6.5 will I need or should I have to accomplish the above in the easiest most efficient manner. Any other reccomended reading or software please let me know. Thanks.
You can use Permiere 6.5 to edit the video/audio, and also create the mpeg-2 streams. You'll then need a dvd authoring program like TMPGEnc DVD Author. This will create the dvd structure, including menus etc. You can download it and use it for 30 days - free. Then use your favourite burner (Nero?) to burn the vob/ifo/bup files onto DVD. Good luck, and use a rewritable DVD until you get the hang of it! jnihil.
Is TMPEGEnc the best for making really professional kickass menus? Couple other programs I'm wondering about: Is there a good program to slice a large uncompressed .avi into smaller files? I want to backup the raw uncompressed .avi capture off my digital camcorder to dvd's without encoding it or doing anything that will cause any quality loss. I know it will take alot of discs but I don't care. I think each minidv tape is 18 megs and I need to cut them into smaller peices for burning. Is there a good program for this? Also is there a good program for losslessly compressing large files? I have a 4.8 gig .avi that almost fits on a dvd but not quite. I tried zipping it and it makes it small enough to fit on a dvd but the zip files are always bad. It says the file is corrupt and I can never open it to decompress it (even before I get a chance to burn it). Any reccomendations for this?
TMPGEnc DVD Author can create rather nice motion menus with sound, so it really depends on whether you find that kickass or not. Give their trial a go. It's a very intuitive program, unike some other authoring programs. For maximum flexibility, there are other authorware available, but they cost more $$$ and have a higher learning curve. I personally use really simple menus (or none) so TMPG is good enough for me. I never tried to slice AVIs so I'll leave that question for now Compressing AVIs - don't really think it's worth it. Most file compressors (zip, rar) will only slightly compress videos. Probably better off converting to mpeg-2 or mpeg-4 at high bitrates so that you don't notice the compression so much. BTW, a miniDV tape is a lot more than 18MB if you are using the DV codec. Rgds, jnihil.
As I stated the reason I want to compress the avi with something like a zip is because it DOES compress it enough for my purpose, I don't want ot encode it in any way. I want to save the raw file. I have full tape capture on my hard drive now that's only 13 GB
