Creating a VCD/DVD from camcorder tapes

June 13, 2007 5:01 PM

1) I have a sony camcorder. I want to convert the contents of the camcorder tape, to a video cd or dvd format. Currently i tried using windows movie maker to see if it is possible, but it is not allowing me to create a video cd or dvd. It only creates a file playable in windows movie maker or windows media player..

a)Can someone recommend me some software which does this...

b)I heard nero does it...Is that correct ? Nero is quite costly..$59 at amazon... Nero does lot of other things too, which i don't need...

Is there a ligher version of nero, which is less costly and which does this functionality alone.(i.e converts camcorder contents to a video cd or dvd) ?If yes, can you pl. let me know, what is the ligher version ?

c) Is there any other alternative software which does this and which is less costlier..?If so , can you please let me know, exactly, which software it is ?

d) I heard using nero, you can record t.v programs...Is that correct..If so can someone please. tell me how it is possible ?

Thanks in advance for your patience and time...

posted by tom123 to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

VHS camcorder?
posted by k8t at 5:10 PM on June 13, 2007

Here's an open source tool. Are you sure there wasn't any DVD authoring software bundled with your computer or DVD burner?
posted by mr_roboto at 5:27 PM on June 13, 2007

This is a total derail reply that doesn't address any of your concerns with Nero, but IMO -- it's much easier to transfer media onto DVD using a dedicated recorder. Especially fi we're talking tapes like your title suggests.

You can find them these days for around $100, and it's quicker, cheaper & faster (in the long run) then injesting all of the video, encoding, and then burning.

The negative? You definitely don't get as many options in terms of fancy menus or say, an interface.

But in terms of time & ease of use, you can't beat it.
posted by donguanella at 5:52 PM on June 13, 2007

I was surprised how hard it was to turn miniDV tapes into playable dvds when I got my camcorder working. You need to learn a lot more about this - it's not that simple. I'm not the person to tell you, you can google for lots of info like I did.

Here's one website: http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/avi_to_dvd_avi2dvd.cfm

This program seemed to help: http://windv.mourek.cz/
posted by wilful at 6:46 PM on June 13, 2007

This was asked previously and someone suggested Avid Free DV. It's free and supposedly fairly powerful. I've just started working thru the tutorials so I can't recommend it per se but worth a try for the price.
posted by Mitheral at 8:04 PM on June 13, 2007

I would recommend Adobe Premier elements which I think is about $99 but for that you get DVD authoring and quite powerful video editing software, with far more control than windows movie maker offers, which you'll be grateful for in the long run. It's the consumer version so it's supposed to be fairly intuitive!
posted by TwoWordReview at 1:56 AM on June 14, 2007

Do you have a dvd recorder? This seems like the simplest option. A lot of dvd recorders have a dv in/out or usb port, and if you don't already have a cable it would be easy to source one to connect your camera to the recorder.

Alternatively Avid Free DV as mentioned by Mitheral could be an easy-ish option. As an editing tool it is very basic, but you get what you pay for. You would have to digitise the footage and then export it as a Quicktime Reference. Then you need a program to convert the QT Reference into Mpeg2 (there are a bunch of programs that do this, google it), and then you can use Nero or another standard DVD record tool to record it to DVD.

Good luck!
posted by ancamp at 3:50 AM on June 14, 2007