DV-to-DVD Wizard Help

[charliewb]

Appreciate the various how to articles on using VS. I purchased VS10 specifically for the subject wizard. I have a lot of DV tapes and I want to make a DVD of each for archiving purposes. I wanted something easy to set up and just let it run to completion.

Just wanted to know if there was a guide on how to best set up and use the wizard before I start asking questions about why this or that isn't working, since I haven't been able to complete a single video using this wizard.

I'd also like to know how long I could expect the process to take - scanning, saving, rendering, etc has been taking 5-6 hrs and still not finishing. How long should it take the wizrd to get from a 60 min DV tape to a completed DVD?

Edit - my profile doesn't seem to appear, so my computer is an HP, Athlon 3400+ CPU (2.2Ghz), 1GB ram, 160gb HD, geforce 6200 video, pioneer dvd+/- R

[sjj1805]

The DV to DVD Wizard is perhaps the simplest way to get what you have on your camcorder onto a DVD disc where you do not want to do any editing.

It is the 'point and click' equivalant of a camera - what you have is what you get - warts and all. You are best advised to connect the camcorder by way of a firewire cable. Place an blank DVD in your DVD burner.
Start the wizard and it will ask a couple of questions such as which of the available templates you wish to use, then leave it to do its work.

The longest step will be the 'transfer' of the video from the camcorder to your computer, a 30 minute video will take 30 minutes, a 1 hour video will take 1 hour etc. On top of this the wizard then converts your video to the selected template and then a further 15 minutes or so for the actual burn.

I would anticipate a 1 hour video would perhaps take a hour and half or slightly longer.

[Ken Berry]

You're a bit more optimistic than I would be, Steve. I thought that wizard captured to DV format (so the capture would certainly take the 1 hour for a 1 hour tape). But it then has to convert it to DVD-compatible mpeg-2, and that conversion, on a computer like that, would probably take at least 2 hours. Then the multiplexing and burning would take in the order of a further half hour at 4x burning speed... So my inclination would be to say closer to 4 hours...

Or does the wizard capture direct to mpeg-2? In which case, is the computer up to the job?

[charliewb]

Thanks for the advice. I am in the middle of another test project and can wanted to add what I've learned so far.

For Steve - No problem with the "warts and all" since I want all the raw video for my archives. Also ok with the miniute for minute capture of the video. But the wizard does not allow me to select drives, templates, etc, during the capture/scan step - that has to be completed first, which then requires me to come back to the computer to go to the next step to make those choices. Sadly, not as automated as I would like it to be.

For Ken - The two capture formats the wizard offers is DVD-AVI and DVD. Can I assume that "DVD" means mpeg-2? I have experience with Pinnacle Studio and it captures video as mpeg-2 with no apparent slow downs. So I would expect that videostudio can do that too. I would rather capture in mpeg-2 so that there isn't another conversion step from AVI.

Here are the starting settings for my test tape, which is a 60min mini-DV: DVD format, using scene detection at max speed (ie, scanning before capturing). Total scan time: 14 minutes with 20 scenes detected.

All scenes were automatically marked, but the wizard offered the opportunity to play selected scenes and unmark them if you wanted to. With nothing else to do I clicked Next:

From here it recognized my DVD recorder, format of DVD-Video, and offered some advanced settings. The only thing I did was uncheck "add titles every x minutes" since I am assuming all marked scenes will get titles. I also selected a theme, and set video quality to High.

Working folder space needed was 7.7GB and it looked like it would fit on the disk. Only choice left to make is to click on Burn.

The tape was rewound to the beginning and video capture started. From the file names being used it looks like video is being captured in mpg format and that each scene is being captured as a separate file. I'm 25 minutes into the capture process so far.

[sjj1805]

Here is a short Video Tutorial of the DV to DVD Wizard prepared by Ulead.

File Size 4.48MB
Duration 48 Seconds
Download Time 2MB Broadband Connection 25 seconds

http://media4.filewind.com/g.php?filepath=1269

[charliewb]

Here is a short Video Tutorial of the DV to DVD Wizard prepared by Ulead.

File Size 4.48MB
Duration 48 Seconds
Download Time 2MB Broadband Connection 25 seconds

http://media4.filewind.com/g.php?filepath=1269

Thanks for the short tutorial. I did successfully burn a DVD from my test tape. It took 14 minutes for the scan, an hour for the capture, about 18 minutes to assemble, and another 26 minutes to burn for a total time of just under 2 hrs.

That is very acceptable, and if I use the burn whole tape option from the tutorial it appears that it can be set up and started in a few minutes and will then run without any further interaction from me.

I did hope that the scene detection scan would also set jump to marks on the DVD, but the wizard did not set any marks. That's one shortfall I can see with the wizard. I do need those marks in order to be able to jump to each scene change when looking for a specific scene on the DVD.

Any way that the wizard can set marks at each scene change?