Hello all. I searched through the forums regarding transferring MiniDV video to a DVD. I just have a quick question. Is an "All in One" program such as "DVDSanta" best for someone such as myself who is new to video and doesn't want to get into a bunch of editing? Basically, I want to shoot video with my MiniDV camcorder, download it to my PC via the Firewire port and then burn the video on a DVD for use in a player hooked up to my HDTV. If there is something critical here I'm missing, please let me know. Again, I don't really want to do anything fancy or high end with my video, at least not at the present time. I'd just like to shoot, transfer to my PC and transfer to a DVD which I can watch on my DVD player. Thank you in advance for your help!
You must be one of the best video people alive, if you, or whoever takes the video, doesn't make a mistake. LOL Once you look at the video, I would bet that you will find something you want to cut out. I have never used DVD Santa, so I don't know if it is what you need, or not. I do know that if you are using firewire, which you should be, then you want to capture as an .avi file and not an .mpg file. I have used Roxio, N-e-r-o, and a couple of other programs. N-e-r-o was low end for editing home video, but was good at encoding the video. Roxio is great for editing, and the encoding is also good.
How about if we say my aversion to editing comes a desire for that "natural" look? Okay, who am I kidding? I've never really done any video editing on a PC before; I'd just like to know how to get the raw footage from the PC to a watchable DVD. Assuming I DO capture the video from the camcorder to the PC as an >avi file, how would I go about getting that on to a DVD which can be watched on a player? Thanks!
You need a program, free or otherwise, that can burn that .avi file to a DVD as a DVD compliant movie. I listed 2 in my previous post. DVD Santa will work, also.