I have just purchased the pv-gs 300 and am about to start to use it. The tape I have is a 60 min fuji and I imagine like my older sony super 8's, hi 8's etc.that I will not have to turn the tape over that all of the recording is on one side of the tape. As you can tell, I have not been into a camcorder for quite sometime and did all of my editing with my sony editor. I don't plan on doing editing initially, I simply want to transfer onto a dvd and send it off to some relatives that we haven't seen for years. First off, I have to get myself a firewire to connect to the notebook which is a 2 month old toshiba, M50-Mx5, Centrino 1.86 ghz, 1 gig, 100 gb SATA 5400 rpm,Intel graphics media accelerator 900, Pentium mobile. My hobby has been transferring my classic vhs collection from my Hauppauge win tv pvr usb 2 and creating a dvd with movie factory 4. I use my BenQ External burner 162I, which is uptodate with the firmware and I use the media that the BenQ support recommends. They are out of Irvine CA and advise using R+ maxell, tdk, sony or imation. in western canada the most available is the maxell and i use that and burn in the BenQ's "Book Management exe." which is DVD ROM, and all of my back ups work on the entire family and friends standalone players, from door crasher specials of the kids to home theatre models. I also have the Nero Express 6. I don't know where to start with trying to do a transfer to a dvd and wondered if there are: 1. recommended programs 2. tutorials I want to start out simply doing a straight transfer before I start with titles etc. as i have promised these relatives a dvd of the family and so I don't know if any of the programs that I already have will do the job or not. I should say I also have Any DVD, but I know that won't be necessary for this backup creation. At the moment I am in the dark over all of this and would appreciate it if someone could advise as to what is the best way for me to introduce myself to this. I did a lot of reading and posting in forums before I started with my Hauppauge Unit in creating dvd's from vhs tapes and I should say that I have done over 100 of them and not had one coaster from my BenQ External burner. I would gratefully appreciate your comments and look forward to the experienced members suggestions. Best regards and cheers!!
hi there... I've started downloading from camcorders recently and so far I've obtained very good quality output. Here's my step by step brief tutorial You will need a software to capture from your camcorder (I use a freeware program called Captureflux which you can d/l from http://paul.glagla.free.fr/captureflux_en.htm ), an MPG-2 encoder such as TMPG or WinAVI and an authoring tool (I use DVDLab Pro http://www.mediachance.com) Optionally, if you want to add date & time of your shooting, you'll need DVSubmaker ( http://www.videohelp.com/tools?tool=DV_Sub_Maker ). Also, VirtualDub is needed if you want to cut or edit the footage downloaded 1) Connect your camcorder to the firewire (i-link) board with the proper cable and select the option to play the movie on your camcorder 2) turn the camcorder on. Windows (I assume you're using XP) should recognize immediately the camcorder and would offer the possibility of using its own program. Say no. 3) open captureflux. Select option DV type 2 normal (this way you'll ne able to edit it with virtualdub later on), play the tape and start capturing 4) when finished capturing, close captureflux and open virtualdub if you want to modify or edit the captured footage. (I will not add in very much details about Virtualdub since there already are better and in depth guides about it, sorry.) 5) if you want the date and time to appear as a subtitle stream in your video, then its time to open DVSubmaker and follow their instructions (that is load the video and press start). Save the subtitle file created 6) Open the MPG-2 Encoder and encode the desired AVI video onto MPG-2 (again, I will not add many more details about it) 7) Once encoded open DVDLab Pro (guides provided in the mediachance page) and create your DVD project. Add the subtitle stream if created. Compile the project to your hard drive and Burn! Hope it helped!!!
Thx for the reply, so I will need 3 programs to create the dvd. I don't want to start out with using the date and time; what is on the tape via the corder is sufficient for me in my intro to this world. I take it that this Captureflux is better than Ulead Moviemaker 4 which I use to capture my videos via my Hauppauge win tv usb 2. Will this program not convert the mpeg 2 to avi or I have to use the latter program to do that or is it the Virtual Dub that does this? I appreciate the concise way that you have put everything out to me in such a methodical manner. When I capture from my Hauppauge unit the video ends up in "My Videos" and then I simply use my BenQ External burner from there to create the dvd via my BenQ "Book Management exe." command that burns in DVD ROM and sits in my task bar while this process is going on. Then as mentioned my backups are all DVD ROM and playable in all DVD standalones including my little nieces playstation. Since you are more experienced in this procedure than I am, I don't know if the captured video is mpeg 2 or avi. The jargon is unfamiliar to me. Again I appreciate all of the comments and I have to make a trek out to a store to get a reference book on burning dvd's from camcorders so that I can become familiar with the terminology. Regular backup burning I understand and do and as well creating dvd's from my Hauppauge win tv pvr usb 2 I also can do and understand but this new project has more unique jargon to it that is unfamiliar to me. Best Regards.
Just wondering, can Nero Express 6 not capture and create a dvd from my mini dv tape. Right now I don't want to do any editing simply do a straight copy of what is on my dv tape right out of the corder. The reason being that I have recently reunited with some relatives, which live some distance from me and one is not in good health and is anxious to see video of the family. I thought that I could do this with Nero Express; but by the above description it sounds like I will have to use 3 programs to do this. I would appreciate any information possible. Best regards.
I think Moviemaker (now movie factory) has its own mpeg-2 encoder included, otherwise you shouldn't be able to capture and burn. The step by step procedure above explained is an alternative to one-click programs such as Moviemaker. The key here is "if you feel comfortable and quality is good, then stick to your program". I like different programs because I want to control more in detail things, and tweak a bit. I think to use Nerovision you do need an MPEG-2 encoder, but I ain't sure.
