Greetings, Am new to this forum and subject matter, so I wanted to say hello to everyone first. I joined because I have an "experiment" I am trying to do, and I was wondering if I could get some advice on whether it will work or not. Here is the experiment. I have a SONY Hi-8 Handycam that I use for home movies. It has Firewire outs on it, and I have a Firewire card in my computer that I can do vidcaps with using Adobe Premier 1.5. However, I don't have a really fast system, and the captures turn out a little choppy. To correct this I have been thinking of purchasing a standalone DVD Recorder (like for your TV) that I can use to get the video onto DVD more accurately, and then I can load it into the computer for outside of real time editing. After I get the videos edited, I would then like to burn them back to DVD, so that I can watch them on TV. Now, my questions... First, will this experiment work? And, second, if it will work, what would I need to do it? Assuming it will work. The stand alone DVD Player Recorder seems like any one could be purchased off the shelf, so long as it has the right jacks. But when I go to burn the DVD - that's where I get lost. What video format do I use? Also, I just installed Nero6 on my system, but I cannot tell yet if it will record a DVD for TV video purposes. Will it work? Or will I need to use other authoring software? If I will need to use other authoring software, then what should I use? Thanks, Will
Using a standalone is a viable option to capturing the video from your HandyCam. There are any number of standalone DVD recorders that have firewire (called iLink) available, such as those units made by Panasonic and Sony. In addition, many standalones have both S-Video and plain ole video and audio (RCA type) for inputs, as well. I would recommend you use a +RW to capture video on a standalone. You can either do some preliminary editing on the standalone, or just take the raw video put on the blank DVD and take it to your computer to edit (few, if any standalones are frame-accurate). You can bring your DVD into your computer using any number of programs (I used TMPGEnc Xpress 3), which turns VOBs into MPEG-2 files, which you can then work with in your favorite editing program. Once you're done editing, you can import each MPEG-2 you've created in your editing program into NeroVision using the make DVD-Video option, add a menu and then burn in Nero. If your video is too large to fit on a single-layer DVD, "burn" the DVD to the hard drive and use Nero Recode (or DVDShrink) to reduce file sizes and then burn to a blank DVD.
