Help (please) with home movies...

[Bronco13]

I'm looking to take video from my digital video camera which I've captured via firewire and burn it out to a DVD. I have two basic problems.

1.) 90 mins video is 20GB
2.) I need to go from AVI to DVD (IFO etc.) to play in a regular player.

What's the best set of tools to do this? I don't need any menus or transitions, etc. I'm just looking to archive/share family videos with other people who have regular DVD players.

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance...

[jggimi]

Hello, and welcome to the forum.

Most commercial digital video editing software for consumers includes simplistic DVD encoding, authoring, and burning. I use Ulead's VideoStudio (www.ulead.com) for DV capture and editing, and it has this capability. It is relatively inexpensive, and has a 30 day trial available.

There are non-commercial resources available also, though most MPEG-2 encoders, needed for DVD, are only available commercially due to licensing restrictions.

There are some resources available to you on Doom9's forum and website. Try clicking on a few of these links: We have a DV Forum (http://forum.doom9.org/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=59). It covers all sorts of information on managing digital camcorder video, most of which is in the DV format.
There you'll find a FAQ (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=30495), as well as a set of external links (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=33519) to additional information and tools.
While a consumer grade DV editor usually includes DVD authoring, there is also a DV to DVD Guide (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=60392) there for those who want the most control over their output.
There is a more graphical version of the DV to DVD guide on Doom9's main website as well. Here is the link (http://www.doom9.org/dv/guide.html).

[Mug Funky]

Quenc is free and on par with most commercial mpeg-2 encoders. it has slight issues with rate-control, but for DVD birtrates you'll be safe unless you use LPCM for audio (oh, wait, you might have to).

i think there's also ac-3 audio encoders you can get for free. ffmpeg's "liba52" is a good place to look. i haven't used it myself, but there's only 2 ac3 encoders i know of that are free - that one and ac3enc (which isn't the best). with a bitrate of 224kbps stereo you would be fine with any encoder out there, really, and it'll leave more room for your video (which you'll need, as home video is both grainy and interlaced, 2 things that video encoders tend to not like to hear)

if you make your way through the various guides and forums here, you'll have a pretty nice DVD to play with by the end.

oh, and about Ulead videostudio - i got an OEM of it with my 1394 card (not bad for AUD$50 - a cable, a card and some free software), so it can't be too hard to get hold of.