Making home climbing DVDs?

[Chad_A]

I've seen some awesome homemade Quicktime and Windows movies on the web; most have some nice soundtracks involved.

 

As the year goes by (and maybe for some past climbing trips that I've done) I thought it might be nice to make some DVDs to give away at the holidays to friends and family. Maybe put a few big movie files on one DVD; mostly climbing, but one of mountain biking, hiking, etc...and I'm sure that the Muppets Show theme would be great for my first ski outing. (I plan on taking up skiing, if we ever get some snow.)

 

If anyone has made one of these, or knows of an easy-to-use DVD program, let me know. I'll have to purchase an actual DVD burner (only have a regular CD burner for now), so I know that's an issue. I'm an average PC user; so far, I've been able to figure out your average-joe's issues.

Thanks for insightful replies in advance.

 

Edit: By this, I mean taking movies from my digital camera, and adding a soundtrack, OR, taking jpegs and making slideshows, with a soundtrack added, and then putting them on a DVD (I'd like to do both).

[DPS]

MVS would be the person to ask, Chad. He makes truly great digital movies and knows the technology inside and out. I would encourage you to PM or send him an email.

[Alex]

I have an Iomega SuperDVD USB burner, and use the MyDVD product that comes bundled with it on WinXP Pro SP2. The first week I had it it was nothing but trouble, but if you stick with it, it can all be worked out. One of the interesting issues I found was that if your PC does not come with a built-in DVD player (like mine), chances are you wont have DVD (MPEG3) codecs. This means you will have to buy a software package that includes a software DVD player (Windows Media player does not come with MPEG3 codecs!) that includes the MPEG3 codecs. These start in the 25$ range.

 

In general, MyDVD works fine out of the box and lets you build menus and submenus, and burn in all common DVD formate, however there are certainly some gotchas that might cause problems, mostly hardware related (harddrive bit twiddling, all info is discoverable with Google), but also Windows Media Player 10 is not recognized by the installer for MyDVD, so you might have to roll back to WMP 9.

 

When it comes to DVD burning, the media is actually pretty important: a slight scratch makes a burnable DVD unusable. So treat them gently. Also, LOTS of HDD space and high speed HDD makes a big difference in perf: everything is cached to disk before burned to DVD, so if you are burning a single layer DVD you still need minimum 5 GB free HDD space, preferably defragged.

 

Some geeks here at MS use Nero and swear by it, but my understanding is that Nero doesnt have an interface to create menus, kind of limiting the "family" appeal. They also tend to be guys who buy 80 GB external drives and store their data that way for the most part, until they want to burn something specific. Something to consider, for sure.

 

I believe MS actually has its own product called movie maker, but I have not tried it.

 

Another person to ask is philfort, of MtnPhilms....www.mtnphil.com.

 

Alex

[chris_w]

Commercial DVD's are mpeg2 with encryption. You only need to buy the DVD decoder if you plan on playing commercial DVD's on your computer.

[Bill_Simpkins]

I use Final Cut Pro for the editing and DV Studio Pro 3 on A Mac G5. I edit all the Video and rough audio. Then I do all the audio detail mixing work on a PC using NUENDO and mastering with WaveLab and special audio plugins syncronized to the Mpeg 2 then export the audio back to the Mac, line it up , author and burn.

You could also use the IDVD thats included with the Macs.

IDVD would probably be sufficient.

DV studio Pro 3 is good for setting up the menu and stuff.

[mvs]

I use Adobe Premiere on Windows XP, and a program that came with the computer called "DVDit! LE" to make the DVD.

 

A really important component is a good zoom/pan of a bitmap. Premiere doesn't do this very well, so I purchased Imaginate for $99.00, and it's a big part of my movies.

 

Lately Theron Welch has made a lot of good climbing films - his are at www.theronwelch.com. I like the Dragontail movie with the "guest star" random 4 year old we ran into at Colchuck Lake.

[Chad_A]

Thank you all for chiming in, and for the info. It's good news to hear that I just need to buy a program with the codecs to have the CD ROM/burner work with DVDs.

 

Although it's daunting to hear about the editing, and the use of differing programs to achieve the project, I'm pretty sure that, by Christmas next year, I'd be able to figure it out.

 

I guess the only issue that remains is the GB of available HD space. I don't know what I have here; might have to look into that one.

 

Also, what good sources does one look to, when looking for the codec program, and the DVD editing software? Online, or would a place like Fry's that I see advertised all over the place be okay?

[Chad_A]

Thanks for that link, shred. I've begun the wading. So much information...might have to get some TG IPA and get down to business!

[gapertimmy]

step one: buy a mac with superdrive

 

step 2: with all the free time you have from not having to deal with spyware/viruses you can make some pretty bitchin fliks with iMovie!

[Chad_A]

step one: buy a mac with superdrive

 

step 2: with all the free time you have from not having to deal with spyware/viruses you can make some pretty bitchin fliks with iMovie!

 

Nice, but...I'd assume that's a bit out of my price range.

[ChrisT]

A thought: What about a VCR-DVD recorder?

 

 

Videotape to DVD, Made Easy

 

By DAVID POGUE

 

Published: January 27, 2005

 

 

 

WHOEVER said "technology marches on" must have been kidding. Technology doesn't march; it sprints, dashes and zooms.

 

That relentless pace renders our storage media obsolete with appalling speed:5¼-inch floppies, Zip disks or whatever. And with the debut of each new storage format, millions of important files, photos, music and video have to be rescued from the last one.

 

At the moment, the most urgent conversion concerns videotape, whose signal begins to deteriorate in as little as 15 years. Rescuing tapes by copying them to fresh ones isn't an option, because you lose half the picture quality with each generation. You could play them into a computer for editing and DVD burning, but that's a months-long project. You could pay a company to transfer them to DVD, if you can stomach the cost and the possibility that something might happen to your precious tapes in the mail.

 

There is, fortunately, a safe, automated and relatively inexpensive solution to this problem: the combo VHS-DVD recorder. It looks like a VCR, but it can play or record both VHS tapes and blank DVD discs, and copy from one to the other, in either direction. Pressing a couple of buttons begins the process of copying a VHS tape to a DVD, with very little quality loss. (You can't duplicate copy-protected tapes or DVD's, of course; only tapes and discs you've recorded yourself.)

 

And if your movies are on some other format, like 8-millimeter cassettes, you can plug the old camcorder into the back of this machine, hit Play, and walk away as the video is transferred to a DVD.

 

(Of course, now you have to worry about the longevity of recordable DVD's. Fortunately, a DVD's movie files are stored as digital signals, not analog, so you won't lose any quality when you copy them onto whatever video format is popular in 2025. Video contact lenses, perhaps?)

 

As a bonus, a combo VCR-DVD player-recorder can eliminate one machine stacked under the TV, one remote control and, in most cases, one set of cables to your TV. (None of this makes it simple, however. All of these machines are far more complex than, say, a stand-alone DVD player.)

 

I sampled four of these combo boxes: the Panasonic DMR-E75V, the RCA DRC8300N, GoVideo's VR2940, and the JVC DR-MV1S. (Who makes up these model names, anyway - drunken Scrabble players?) All are available online for $285 to $350. As it turns out, shopping for a combo recorder is an exercise in compromise. Here are some of the trade-offs you have to look forward to.

 

JACKS Each recorder has a dazzling array of jacks on the front and back panels, for ease in connecting to your other home-entertainment gear. For example, each has so-called component video outputs for a superior picture on recent TV sets. JVC and GoVideo even included a front-panel FireWire input, which lets you dump footage from a digital camcorder directly onto a DVD.

 

Unfortunately, the GoVideo deck lacks an S-video input, a high-quality connection to many camcorder models. And a note to videophiles: The RCA, JVC and GoVideo decks can play both VCR and DVD signals through the same set of component video cables, so you don't have to switch TV inputs to get the best quality. DISC FORMAT Thanks to a foolhardy war between electronics companies, there are two incompatible formats for blank DVD's, confusingly called DVD-R and DVD+R. Recorded discs of either type will play in most recent DVD players, but you have to be careful to buy the right kind of blanks for your recorder, and many stores carry only one type.

 

The RCA and GoVideo decks require DVD+R (and their more expensive, erase-and-reuse variant, DVD+RW). The Panasonic and JVC players take DVD-R discs (and the erasable DVD-RW). A disc of either format must be "finalized" (a 2- to 15-minute electronic shrink-wrapping) before it will play in other DVD players.

 

As a bonus, the Panasonic and JVC models also accept a third format called DVD-RAM, which doesn't play in most everyday DVD players. But if you just leave it in your recorder, you can use it pretty much like a hard drive, adding and deleting recordings at will, slicing out commercials, watching the beginning of a show whose ending is still being recorded, and so on.

 

Frankly, understanding the differences between all of these formats makes most people's brains hurt. At the outset, you might want to consider just buying straight-ahead, ordinary blanks (either DVD-R or DVD+R) and treating them as burn-once-and-forget-it DVD's.

 

COPY QUALITY The quality of the copy depends on the speed setting you choose. The one- and two-hour DVD settings, for example, are nearly indistinguishable from the original VHS tape. Remember, of course, that VHS quality isn't so great to begin with. The four- to eight-hour modes look pretty terrible. The JVC and Panasonic decks also offer in-between settings that maximize quality based on the length of the recording, as long as you know the length ahead of time.

 

VCR FEATURES Only the JVC and Panasonic models offer VCR Plus+, the shortcut system that programs your recorder to record a show when you copy its code out of the newspaper TV listings. This feature applies to recordings made on either a tape or a disc, so a better name might be VCR Plus+ Plus DVD Plus+.

 

REMOTE CONTROL None of the remotes are fully illuminated, although the JVC's primary playback controls glow. Most require you to press a DVD or a VCR button before pressing Play, Pause or whatever; only the RCA is smart enough to play whatever is in the machine (a disc or a tape) - or, if one of each is inside, to ask which you want. The buttons on GoVideo's remote are especially poorly designed; they're all alike, all tiny, all the time.

 

DVD FEATURES All four of these decks work fine as DVD players, but the GoVideo's AutoPlay feature can skip all the ads, movie trailers, FBI warnings and so on at the beginning of a DVD movie, and just start playing the movie itself. DVDelicious!

 

Speaking of smart, the JVC, Panasonic and RCA decks offer a 30-second skip button that works on both discs and tapes; the JVC and RCA also offer a 7-second replay button that's great for catching mumbled dialogue.

 

CHAPTER MARKERS Each deck creates a new "chapter" of your DVD for each new recording you copy to it. But within a long recording, the Panasonic, RCA and JVC models just put a chapter marker every few minutes.

 

The GoVideo offers two more sophisticated features. One, an option called YesVideo, produces a handsome main menu featuring thumbnail images of the chapter breaks - an infinite improvement over the invisible markers of its rivals. (GoVideo's ads imply that these breaks are intelligently placed at scene breaks, but usually they're just spaced at regular intervals.) Better yet, if you pop the finished disc into a Windows PC, you can print out a DVD jewel-case insert depicting those thumbnail images, so you can see what's on the disc without having to put it into a player. Very cool.

 

YesVideo is available only if there's just one recording on a disc. Even without this feature, though, GoVideo still lets you place chapter markers manually during playback, complete with thumbnail images.

 

SUPPORT GoVideo should take pride in the fact that it prominently displays its toll-free tech-support number right on the box, part of what it calls its "widely heralded White Glove Customer Care."

 

It should be ashamed, however, of the fact that White Glove Customer Care turns out to be keeping you on hold for an hour, waiting for an agent - until a recording tells you that everyone's busy and hangs up on you. I never did get through.

 

Panasonic's player has a jaw-dropping list of features, including an amazing one-minute full-tape rewind speed, picture-in-picture, and so on - but its manual reads like a bad translation of the Japanese income-tax form. (Writing sample: "The title is irretrievably erased when you use this procedure and cannot be retrieved.")

 

On the other hand, RCA's manual offers standard high-school English-class writing - which means that, among electronics manuals, it's practically Shakespeare.

 

MAKING A CHOICE The GoVideo is the least expensive deck ($285 at shopping.com), its DVD preview-skipping feature is almost irresistible, and that YesVideo chapter thumbnail thing is a worthy exclusive. Its reliability is worrisome, though. My review unit froze several times during testing, and after a few days refused to burn any more DVD's. A replacement unit occasionally stopped burning discs until it was unplugged and plugged in again, earning it the household nickname Don'tGoVideo.(GoVideo's buyer reviews online are similarly discouraging.) The RCA ($346) and Panasonic ($342) are fine machines, but they can't touch the JVC ($312) for good looks, price or genuinely useful features. For example, only the JVC has two tuners, so that it can record two things at once (one on tape, one on DVD). And only JVC offers an infrared blaster (when you send in your registration card), which changes the channel on your cable or satellite box for a scheduled recording. VCR Plus+, a full complement of jacks and the glowing remote only sweeten the deal.

 

In any case, the arrival of the combo VCR-DVD recorder is a welcome moment in format-turnover history. Now all we need is an equally automated machine that rescues our vinyl records, Apple II floppies and 8-track tapes.

[Chad_A]

Nice thought, Chris; that would be a simple solution. But, with that option, unfortunately, one can't make their own menus, and specialized options and such. The thought of combining two pieces into one (and gaining some much needed space) does sound appealing, though!