Capturing from DV device question

[Nazgulled]

I need to capture and save to dvd some movies I have on a DV Sony Handycam and I need an easy point-and-click user intreface to do it because this is not for me, but for my uncle and he doesn't understand much so I need something easy to use and intuitive.

I downloaded the trials of Ulead VideoStudio 9 and Ulead DVD Movie Factory 4 but I'm having some problems with both. First, I can only choose 2 from an 8 items list of export/save formats. Which are AVI and MPEG (this in videostudio), I can't choose DVD, VCD, DV, etc... I cant't really tell why. Second, the quality is really poor... I tried to have the mpeg in 640x480 with full quality and it wasn't very good and I dunno if this is because the format choosen (which was MPEG) or it's just because videostudio can't do better.

Now, I'm using a USB cable to do all this, I don't have a firewire interface on my computer (nor does my uncle). Maybe both of my problems described above has any thing to do with the interface? Will I have better quality and allowed to choose DVD format if I use a firewire cable? That's the real question I need and answer for.

One more thing, I can't really tell the big differences from Video Studio and DVD Moviefactory, can you explain a bit to me the differences and which one should I get (in case I get the above problems fixed)? I haven't tested much both but they seem alike to me with slightly different GUI's.

All I want the software to do is, capture the movie in the best qualit possible, had some initial title, maybe a banckground music and able to export it to dvd, all this the easiest and most intuitive possible cause it's for an uncle that doedsn't understand much.

TIA.

[Nazgulled]

can't anyone help me on this? It's just a simple question...

[bb]

You need firewire... USB is usually only for photo transfers.

bb

[neily]

Nazgulled,

I'm sure most have avoided responding because it is not a simple question at all. Basically what you are asking is to explain everything there is to know about transferring DV to DVD, whilst providing little information on your setup and what you have tried.

First off, as bb said, you need to get a firewire card for your PC. To my knowledge, with my Sony DV camcorder, USB is only used to transfer still and poor quality video from the memory stick to the PC. To capture the raw DV tape data you need to transfer via a firewire interface. I don't know what you are capturing at present, but it is not DV AVI or DVD MPEG2. For DV there are only 2 standards (PAL and NTSC) with no variation, and it is not 640x480. Similarly encoding for DVD, the standards are pretty rigid. You can find both easily by googling.

As to the differences between VideoStudio and Movie Factory 4, I'm pretty sure both use the same encoding and writing engines, so results will be comparable. VideoStudio has a few more options. You can easily see the differences at the ULead website. I have heard good reports of Movie Factory 4, and for the price, and for your requirements, it should fit the bill. Alternatively, if you have Nero, then there is basic video capture and DVD burning capability built in, and you could give that a try. Neither have what would be considered top drawer encoders, but should be perfectly adequate for your needs, and would not lead you to think that the output quality is poor, especially if viewed on a TV, which gerenerally is far more forgiving than a PC.

Bottom line though is that you need a firewire port before considering anything else.

[Nazgulled]

I never asked to explain me everything about DV to DVD... All I wanted was differences between using usb and firewire cables... that's it. Just beucae videostudio and dvd moviefactory wouldn't allow me to save the videos in different formats than mpeg and/or avi and I wanted to know if it was related to the usb cable or not... I don't want to buy a firewire pci card if it's not going to help.

But I believe that is the problem.

About the differences between the 2 software packages. I read already everything on ulead site and I can't really get the differences, they both seem alike with the same features, but there must be some kind of difference...

Maybe when I have firewire I can test them both better...

Thanks.