dvd from game video

crimson mo · July 16th, 2004, 04:13 PM

I have game tapes going back to 79 and i am wanting to convert them to dvd.
I have bought a new computer with a dvd burner in it and i was wondering if any of you can recomend a media capture device for me to use to record the games on the computer.
I know about dazzel and "avd" but i dont know wich is better and if their are more out there.
Also i was wondering if any of you use the computer to make dvds or do you have a dvd recorder?
If you use a recorder, what kind woud you recomend?
thanks for the info!!!!

sbott · July 19th, 2004, 01:12 PM

and use Panasonic.

Ehill should be able to reply about the computer based ones.

s

crimson mo · July 19th, 2004, 10:44 PM

Thanks for the info.
Panasonic huh?
I have a panasonic vcr and tv,I have had no trouble out of them.
It is a good brand name.
The dvd burner in my computer is a pioneer and so far it has made excellent copies of my favorite dvd movies.
I hope your right about ehill giving me advice.
I have also bought a jvc pvr sat recevier with 120 gig hard drive.
I will need to transfer the games from it to my computer so i can have them on dvd.
but if all else fails i can record from my recevier to a vcr till i get the computer
stuff figured out.

ehillbama · July 20th, 2004, 02:58 PM

Creating DVD's using the computer is a multi-task proposition. You have more control and can make nice looking DVD's (Neat menus, chapter points where you want them, motion menus, to name a few). The only thing is to get it looking nice with good quality can be expensive. You will need a high-speed PC with LOTS of disc space. Mine is a dual-processor 3.05Ghz machine with 2GB memory and two 200GB hard drives. Video takes up a bunch of space and a bunch of CPU. Also, I think you have probably already decided, this is not like burning a CD. There are many more steps.

Capture Devices:

I use the Pinnacle DC1000 capture card. I can capture video via composite (yellow jack), s-video, or firewire. Audio is either RCA (red and white jack) or firewire. I did have a Dazzle Hollywood DV-Bridge which worked ok but did not get quite the quality I wanted. Pinnacle has discontinued the DC1000, but they are still a great capture device. You might be able to get one on Ebay for pretty cheap. They retailed over $1000.00.

As you know, you must get the video into the MPEG-2 format to be compliant with DVD. The DC1000 is very flexible in that you can capture directly into MPEG or capture in AVI, but other capture devices can do this as well. Capturing in AVI uses a bunch of disc space and then takes a long time to re-encode into MPEG-2, BUT (especially coming from VHS which is the worst for getting good video) it will be better quality. The DC1000 will work only in conjunction with Adobe Premiere 5.1 - 6.5. Which brings me to my next topic:

Video Editing Programs:

This is where you take your captured video and cut out the parts you don't want (commercials, halftime of games, etc.) and make the video that will eventually end up on the DVD. I use Adobe Premiere to do this as well since it is so integrated with my capture device. There are numerous others: Ulead VideoStudio, Pinnacle Edition, etc.

DVD Authoring Programs:

The DVD authoring process is where you take the exported MPEG-2 video from your video editing software and actually create your DVD. This is where you create menus, chapter points, and burn the final DVD. I used to exclusively use Sonic's DVDIt, but have recently switched to Ulead's DVDWorkshop 2.0. DVDIt just came out with a new version, so it may have caught up a bit, but it had really lagged behind the times for a while. There are plenty of authoring programs out there. Some fairly inexpensive but limited up to some very expensive ones.

====

There are some new software packages now that only require a firewire connection to capture your video. If you have a way of converting the video to a firewire connection (i.e. digital camcorder with video in and dv-out functionality). Some of these are Pinnacle Edition 5, Pinnacle Liquid Edition, Sonic Foundry Vegas.

I hope this gives you a little up front help and let me know if you have other questions...

crimson mo · July 20th, 2004, 11:01 PM

This is a lot of info to digest.
I have a 3200 AMD athlon xp processor with an 160 GB hard drive with a
10 GB second drive and 512 mb SDRAM.do you think this is enough to make quality game DVDS?
I have been looking at a couple of dazzel devices and they seem of high quality but since creating dvds from video is new to me I'm taking it slow.
When i narrow my choices down i'll ask which you would choose.
Thanks again and roll tide!!!!!!!

ehillbama · July 21st, 2004, 08:33 AM

You might be pushing it with that computer setup. Especially the disk space. 20 minutes of AVI captured video will take approximately 4GB of hard drive space. If you are able to capture it directly to MPEG-2 then that goes down considerably but then you have the quality issue.

A web site that can help a bunch is:

http://www.videohelp.com/

It has all kinds of tutorials, forums, and reviews. It was extremely helpful when I first started out.

Let me know if you have any other questions. If you want, email me at hille@wlv.com (during the day) or ehill@jandedesigns.com in the evening...

Eric