Suggestions for software to publish DVD recordings to web

April 27, 2007 12:44 PM

I'm currently making recordings to a DVD and am interested in inexpensive software to edit and compress the recording with the intent to publish it to the web. An easy system to learn and that is relatively fast would be best. Thanks in advance for your suggestions...Orlin
posted by orlin to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

Best answer: Depending on the host application you used to edit the footage this may be more or less difficult than it needs to be.

Web "experts" will bicker all day over MOV/WMV, Bitrates and dry technical details all day long but the simple answer is you need to ignore all that. Figure out how to convert your clips (or export them directly from your editing application) to a suitable FLV encoding. Then you create an XML driven Flash Player by following the tutorials from GotoAndLearn.com and you'll be all set.

People want to watch videos, not have the option to download 3 different bitrates in two different formats to god knows where on their hard drive (they don't pay attention). Youtube and GV prove this, so don't bother reinventing the wheel.

For reference, I do all of my video work in After Effects which has a very well rounded FLV export option. It can be a bit time consuming to re-purpose a heavy MPG file to FLV when you could simply render it to that format directly.

Also, the million dollar hint is this: any application you want can be inexpensive, if you know where to look.
posted by prostyle at 12:55 PM on April 27, 2007

Best answer: If you're 'authoring' it (shooting & editing, THEN running it through DVD authoring software)- Adobe Encore (part of CS3) solves your problem as a single click

Literally. Author the DVD, press the "Convert to web." It'll recreate your menus + video in flash format, ready to go.

Of course, if you're recording directly to DVD, you're going to have huge headaches (as most editing software hates MPEG2 files, especially in VOB format), that you will need to convert to a friendlier format, edit, then author + create for DVD.
posted by filmgeek at 12:57 PM on April 27, 2007

Response by poster: Right now I'm recording directly to a DVD and would like to take about 20 minutes out of a 80 minute recording, convert it to a format that can be put up on the net for such sites as youtube. There doesn't need to be elaborate editing functions. Thanks to all again for your advice...Orlin
posted by orlin at 1:13 PM on April 27, 2007

"fast" is going to depend more on the horsepower of the machine doing the transcoding. you can use adobe whatever or shell scripts, or java or anything to line the encoding and publishing steps together, but the most time is going to be spent actually doing the work, not setting the wheels in motion.
posted by rhizome at 3:02 PM on April 27, 2007