David Benzick Posted May 27, 2004 Share Posted May 27, 2004 Hi All, I just got a Sony digital cam corder DCR30 and it has drug me out of my cave into the modern world. I don't own a DVD player yet but soon will. So, should I get a DVD player that also can "burn" DVDs or is there a better way to go about producing the actual disc? I do have a laptop with Windows 98 if that could be used somehow. Please remember your speaking to a computer caveman when replying. Thanks Dave Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shred Posted May 27, 2004 Share Posted May 27, 2004 Laptop w/Windows 98 = "cave rock" for DVD-burn purposes. You'll need a new computer to do DVD burning if you want to go that route. I don't know a lot about the standalone DVD-burn appliances, but have heard they do OK. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcoliver Posted May 28, 2004 Share Posted May 28, 2004 For top quality DVD recording from your cam you'll need to have a Firewire port (or an add-on card with a firewire port you can plug) in your computer. You use this to connect your cam to your computer and save the videos in your hard drive. You'll need lots of of hard drive space for this. The ideal DVD recorder should be able to burn DVD-R and DVD+R media. Can't remember exactly the difference but for some reason one media is cheaper than the other. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Posted May 28, 2004 Share Posted May 28, 2004 Hey David, I can tell you more this Sunday at Ione, but basically as has been said earlier a W98 box isn’t the best tool for this job. A newer machine running XP (Pro if possible) will do the job if you get one fully dressed out with the internal DVD burner drive and the right software bundle. You will not be able to upgrade your machine easily, or cheaply enough to make doing that worthwhile. A new desktop that will do this seamlessly is gonna run $7-900 at the low end to $1100-1300 if you actually want some performance in the dog. Add $400 to those price ranges to make the new machine into a laptop. You can now buy Camcorders from Sony & Hitachi that record onto DVD’s directly but you didn’t want to hear that ;-) I am not exactly sure which Sony model you mean, is it the DCR-PC330? Or is it a DCR-TRV series camcorder? I am guessing it is a MiniDV format camcorder and that it has a FireWire port (Sony will sometimes call it iLink). If it doesn’t have a FireWire port, game over for the do it yourself route. If you do not expect to do very much and just want DVD copies of some special tapes, you can have MiniDV converted to DVD for $$70-$90/tape and additional copies made for $10-$20/per. at places that offer conversion services. It will take a lot of tapes and copies to pay back the $1000 (minimum) new hardware investment and the hours (maybe days even) of your time and all the pieces of blank media it will take for you to get it all sorted out. To be perfectly honest, if you really want to do this, you would be best served getting an Apple eMac w/ SuperDrive for $999 and just plugging in the camera, popping in a disc and pressing the burn button. It really isn’t that simple, but it is the simplest, easiest to learn, most reliable and sure to work method of doing some home movie editing and DVD creation there is. Honestly, no other hardware system will come as close to plug-n-play as this will. The Windows platform is pretty solid and this can be done in XP with a new machine with a little noodling, but nowhere near as easily as on an Apple right outa da box with the built-in video software. MicroSoft is still trying to figure out what happened here and their attempt has so far failed to pass muster. Apple still owns desktop video for the un-initiated. -- Regards, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Posted May 28, 2004 Share Posted May 28, 2004 BTW, Here is a place that will transfer a single MiniDV tape to a DVD for $14.95 per http://www.videos2dvd.com/videostodvd.html And there are no standalone devices I am aware of that will transfer MiniDV to DVD, all the standalone’s I am familiar with make copies of DVD’s (one DVD to another). An outboard DVD burner for a computer will not just allow a camcorder plugged in to move it’s footage over to DVD. It is a lot more complicated than that, and an incredibly slow process on even the fastest machines. Like I said earlier, more later on Sunday in Ione at the 3 gun. Later, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lmccrock Posted May 28, 2004 Share Posted May 28, 2004 George, A newer machine running XP (Pro if possible) Why XP Pro? The advertised differences do not show much reason to go with Pro vs. Home, for DVD burning. Just asking, the only time I used XP was running some lab machines which were allowed not to use the corporate standard, which was 2000 Pro. Lee Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shred Posted May 28, 2004 Share Posted May 28, 2004 No big difference on XP Home vs Pro in this case. However, I have seen "Plug your camcorder in here, DVD's come out here" standalone burn-appliances on sale. They aren't cheap since they're 90% of a PC's hardware in a shiny box with some extra buttons, but they do exist. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bberkley Posted May 28, 2004 Share Posted May 28, 2004 You want a fast system with lots of RAM and fast hard drives to do any video editing. My PC has (2) 36.7GB Serial ATA 10,000 RPM drives in it, and I use one of them explicitly for video capture. You could purchase a DVD recorder that fits in with your home A/V gear and use it instead of a VCR. Thats probably going to cost about half of what a decent PC for video editing will run. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Posted May 28, 2004 Share Posted May 28, 2004 Why XP Pro? The advertised differences do not show much reason to go with Pro vs. Home, for DVD burning. It’s not video work that Pro matters for, it’s overall stability and lack of problems. I have over the long run had nothing but little niggling problems with two machines running XP home. After upgrading them to Pro, they are rock solid and never burp anymore. Problems were constant lockups running PPT with large files, stability issues running VTR & Router control programs using serial ports and sporadic lockups in Word, Excel & IE.Shred, I haven’t seen any of the plug-n-play (burn actually) devices you mention and my searching hasn’t found any so far either. Not sure if the price on something like that is gonna be very reasonable either Like under a $1000). I have priced high-end DVD duplicators for my own production needs and they start at $1500 and go up from there, but these also do screen type labeling and testing all in one device. I am interested in finding something like that myself to handle video to DVD transfers for my clients in an easier manner than I am doing it now (3 individual steps & 14 hours encoding per tape transfer). If you know of a model and Mfg, let me know. I am still looking. -- Regards, BTW, a humongous amount of fast disk space (think RAID) is handy but not required unless you are gonna do real production work (I do). If you just want to put a couple of hours of camcorder footage onto DVD, most modern machines come with fast enough and large enough drives to do the job at the consumer level. We won’t talk about the drive fragmentation mess video handling leaves behind The Apple eMac for $999 comes with an 80GB 7200rpm ATA100 drive and for $100 more you upgrade it to a 160GB. Even the 80GB standard option will hold almost 6 hours of (compressed) video, so it’s not that big an issue unless you are really going into production. My setup on my editing machine (G4 1.4Ghz) uses 4 7200 RPM Ultra ATA 133 120GB’s in a RAID array running on their own controller card. There is a separate 60GB startup/application drive and another 120GB drive that is used as the destination when rendering to keep speed up. After projects are finished, I roll them off to FW drives for storage, or just dump the files if the project is not important. I wipe the dig drives periodically to keep them unfragmented. -- Regards, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shred Posted May 28, 2004 Share Posted May 28, 2004 I don't see the exact model, but several manufacturers are making DVD-recorders with DV-input/transfer capability. Features, quality and editing ability probably vary from minimal to none, especially given the non-highlited nature of this feature in most of these spec sheets. Sony RDR-GX7 ($699) has DV-control and 1394 video-in This GoVideo DVD/VCR claims to also record DV->DVD. Panasonic has a couple units that do DV-DVD transfer ($550 & $1150). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Benzick Posted May 28, 2004 Author Share Posted May 28, 2004 You guys are technology animals. Thanks for the info. See you Sunday George. Know your 300 yard zero. (Manditory gun content) Dave Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shred Posted May 28, 2004 Share Posted May 28, 2004 Oh yeah, this is the approximate order of DVD compatibility with ordinary DVD players: (almost no consumer DVD players support this) 0- DVD-RAM (some newer players play these ok) 1- DVD+RW 1- DVD-RW (more likely to work) 2- DVD-R (slightly even more likely to work) 2.5- DVD+R Note that burners typically only burn some of these formats and the disks are not compatible. If you can get it, get a "Combo" +/- R/RW drive that does 'em all, and burn +R's when you want to be compatible with the most consumer players. Most of the ones I found seem to burn to 'minus-R' format, but I'd look for +R if I could get it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Larry Cazes Posted May 29, 2004 Share Posted May 29, 2004 My LiteOn Drive is billed by the mfg as being 8X dual mode DVD+-R/RW compatible but so far I havent found ANY -R media that it is 100% reliable writing to. It seems to prefer memorex +R media. Media standards are still pretty loose and you really have to experiment quite a bit...... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shred Posted May 29, 2004 Share Posted May 29, 2004 Oh yeah, one more thing on DVD media.. It all comes out of plants in Taiwan and China. The people running those plants don't know the meaning of the word 'scrap'. So, everything they make gets sold, one way or another. Best bet is to buy a brand-name that the owner cares about the image of. They usually test the stuff they get (one guess where the lot rejects go) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Posted May 29, 2004 Share Posted May 29, 2004 My absolute best compatibility burns use DVD-R with TDK being best and Memorex next. If you burn at 1x speed instead of trying to race burn, compatibility approaches 98% in older consumer players if you use DVD-R media and almost 100% in newer DVD players that use third generation chipsets and lasers. DVD+R when burned 1x gets about 90% compatibility in consumer players, but a lot of folks think it is better than DVD-R because it burns better above 1x that DVD-R does. Basically DVD-R burned at 1x is about as good as it gets in compatibility when you are burning disks. If you want it any better, send a working disc to a commercial DVD Replicator plant and enjoy the 500+ piece minimum orders you get as an added feature along with 100% compatability. It is less the burner as long as it is a good one (Pioneer 106’s are typically the best) than it is the media and the burning speed. I have gotten roughly the same compatibility results in several different burners and have come to the conclusion (validated by other folks i know who do production also) that it’s the what you feed and at what speed that matters most. -- Regards, David, my 200 yard zero is fantastic, it’s where I “put“ the crosshairs that usually sucks See you there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Merlin Orr Posted May 30, 2004 Share Posted May 30, 2004 Try here for good info. Read their FAQ section and you will learn a lot in a short time. This is a pretty good resource. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcoliver Posted May 31, 2004 Share Posted May 31, 2004 Just offering out options. How about buying a TV tuner card (~$30) with video-in capabilities and burn in VCD (CD-R burner another ~$30)? Although slightly lower in video quality depending on the capture software/encoders used but it's cheap. And this setup would probably run in win98 with only 128MB of memory. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Posted May 31, 2004 Share Posted May 31, 2004 Hi David, Here is a FAQ page on DVD recorders (standalones) and a simple explanation of why the PC way is harder. http://hometheater.about.com/library/weekly/aadvdrecfaqa.htm Here is the Panasonic page for DVD recorders. Lot’s more good info here too. http://www.panasonic.com/consumer_electron...vd_recorder.asp The Panasonic DMR-E60S seems to be the cheapest one there with the FireWire port. Bummer that the one for $499 with the built-in VHS VCR which would allow transferring old tapes doesn’t have the FireWire port. That would have really been a winner. Hope this helps, -- Geoff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xsrdx Posted June 1, 2004 Share Posted June 1, 2004 After some trial and error, I have good luck with WinXP and Sonic MyDVD, on a Dell CPU with DVD+R/RW burner. Sony MiniDV through a FireWire (Ilink) port to the PC, capture and burn with MyDVD. The DVD+R's burned with Sonic s/w are compatible with every DVD player I've tried so far. DVD's are huge, 4.7GB of storage, so if you have gobs of information to store a combo burner is a good investment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
uscbigdawg Posted August 13, 2004 Share Posted August 13, 2004 So how would you take a VHS tape and burn it to DVD? Rich Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Posted August 14, 2004 Share Posted August 14, 2004 Hi Rich, Short Answer, buy one of these Panasonic DVD Recorder With Built In VHS Player Long Answer, use a PC and get a FireWire DV converter (typically $250+), then capture the VHS into the PC through the converter, then use an authoring application to create a DVD with a burner (internal, or external). This can be a very laborious process compared to a standalone DVD recorder with a VHS VCR patched into it, or the combo DVD/VHS listed in the link above. -- Regards, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
uscbigdawg Posted August 14, 2004 Share Posted August 14, 2004 Dude. Geoff. Luv ya buddy...but you're kind of a geek. Now you know why shooting suffers. Spending way too much effort on this stuff! Just kidding. You guys are awesome. Thanks for the info. Rich Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Posted August 14, 2004 Share Posted August 14, 2004 Kind of? I am not “kind of“ a Geek, I am a 100% card carrying, bonafide shirt pocket pen protector wearing geek. Yeah, I ran the projector in grade school. Yeah, I always won the science fairs in high school. Yeah, I had a ham radio license before I had a drivers license. Yeah, I am a geek and yeah, I am damned proud of it too -- Regards, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DJPoLo Posted August 15, 2004 Share Posted August 15, 2004 So how would you take a VHS tape and burn it to DVD?Rich Here's what I'm doing: Conect VCR to Mini-DV camcorder. Dub VCR tape onto Mini-DV tape. Dump Mini-DV tape to computer (Mac OS X) via FireWire. Burn DVD. This is an over-simplified explanation, but it's pretty easy. -Chet Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcoliver Posted August 16, 2004 Share Posted August 16, 2004 Additional reading HERE and HERE. Good luck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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