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--How
to capture video from your DV camera and convert to DVD
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| This guide will help you capture the
video from your DV camera and convert it to DVD. What you need,
except of course your DV camera and a DVD burner, is a firewire
(IEEE 1394) port in you PC. Maybe you have a port like on your
motherboard, if not, you need to get an add-on PCI card, which
is not very expensive. Also you need a Firewire cable. This
may be included with your camera, if not you'll have to buy
one. After you have all these, connect your DV camera with your
PC (it's plug and play, no need for restart, just like USB)
and wait until windows recognise it. Normally you will need
no drivers for the camera. When you are sure that everything
works OK, we can start this guide. |
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We are going to use a small freeware program,
called WinDV for capturing, as what really happens is not capture
but a digital data transfer from the camera to the PC. Download
it here. Load WinDV and click Config. |
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Here make sure you select Type 2 as the DV capture
type(1). Then set Discontinuity treshold to 0 and Max AVI size
to 1000000. (2). Click OK and go back to the main window. |
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Here first of all select the directory you want
to put the AVI file in (1) and then select the small box (2).
Finally click Capture (3) to start the process. The speed is
1x, so take your time. When capturing of this tape and any others
you may have is done we are ready to move to the next phase
of the guide! |
Now we need to encode the DV files into MPEG2. If you get any
error messages then install these codec. We are going to use
TMPGEnc (get it here). Start TMPGEnc and in the wizard select
your DVD type (probably 4:3, select NTSC or PAL). Also select
MP2 audio and select Next. |
In the next screen select the AVI file you have created both
as audio and video source (1). In the Expert Setting select
the right Ratio (2) and click Next. |
Here select 720x576 as the resolution (1). Set the audio bitrate(2)
and then the percentage of the disc you want to use (3) (make
sure you put the right values if you have more thatn 1 videos
as me here). Make sure everything is OK and click Next. |
Select Output video and audio as individual streams (1) and
if you want to encode more than 1 files at the same time Create
another project and follow the same steps until you have added
all videos. Then from File -> Batch encode start the encoding
jobs.
The program will create a .m2v video file and a .mp2 audio file.
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OK after the files are encoded we need to author the DVD (create
the IFO, VOB and all other files that a DVD uses) as well as
create some menus and chapters. There are many programs around,
and keep in mind that you do not need a really expensive one.
Some suggestions are:
DVD X Maker (Part of the DVD X Treme Suite) for which you
can find a guide here.
TMPGEnc DVD Author which we are going to show here. A more
detailed guide can be found here. 
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OK, we are going to show and example for TMPGEnc
DVD Author. Load the program and click on the "Create New
Project" button you see in the picture. |
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After that click on Add Title in order to add
the video that we created before using TMPGEnc. |
OK here click Browse in the Video settings and load the video
file (.m2v) we created with TMPGEnc (or the first one of them
if they are many). Then click Browse in the audio settings and
select the right audio file (1). Leave the rest settings as
you see them here. After you're done click on Chapter cut edit
(2) on the top of the window.
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OK here we are going to add some chapters. A chapter is the
position in a DVD that tells your DVD player where to stop
when you click the "Next" button on the control.
You can add as many chapters you want, but make sure that
they are not too close or too far. To add some chapters click
the Add button as you see at the picture in your right.
Here you can see the available options. I have selected here
to add one chapter every 5 minutes. you can set 3, 10 or whatever
you like as well as to add a fixed number of chapters. Make
your selection and click OK.
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Back to the main screen now. Here you can easily add more video
that you may have. Just click "Add new track" (1)
in order to create a new track and then add a video to it by
selecting "Add file" (2) and follow the simple steps
that we mentioned just above. Note that you can add more videos
in the same track, but adding them to different ones is better
for the navigation menu that we will now create by clicking
the "Create Menu" button on the top. (3) |
Now you can easily create a menu. Just select the theme that
you like from the drop-down menu. Then you can change what the
text says by double-click on it and add your text so that you
can remember what each video shows. Also select Display Main
Menu in the Firstplay action in order to make the menu come
up first. After you're finished click on Output button! |
Here it's time to create all the files. Select the folder you
want to put the files in, it's better that it is an empty one
(1). Finally click Begin Output (2) to start. It should not
take much time, maybe around 30-40 minutes. |
Finally you can burn your DVD. You can burn it with TMPGEnc
DVD Author as it asks you to burn after authoring is complete.
I suggest you do.
If you want of course you can use any other program like Nero
or CopyToDVD (Nero settings in the picture in your left). |
