Anyone know anything about video to dvd conversion?

[vi5]

I was given Pinnacle Studio plus for Christmas since I"m looking to convert home movies and such to dvd. But as it sits, to do that I'm going to need to buy a new graphics card, as well as a dvd burner for my computer. I'm not sure it's worth it thought since now I see you can buy a video/dvd combo machine For $300 that converts and burns videos directly. I'm thinking this will be just as expensive as buying the other stuff for my computer and will require less set up/learning time as well.

Any advice or recommendations?

[ngant17]

1. home pc video production

I set up one of my computers last year for video editing. Used mostly shareware or demo video-editing software like Pinnacle Expression, anything by Pinnacle is easy to use. A lot of the other video-editing stuff is a waste of time.

If you have a digital video camcorder (not analog), you should get a firewire card so you can upload directly to the hard drive for movie editing. The only hardware I used was the digi-camcorder, firewire card and CD burner. I made VCDs instead of DVDs. Some of the new DVD are rigged with built-in software anti-piracy protection. You can make decent quality home videos, burn them on CD and play them in Windows Media Player or QuickTime format. VCDs are called a 'poor mans DVD'. You're limited to about 1 hour or less with VCDs, but that's okay with me. Also I never had a need to a use high-end graphics card. I would recommend you stick with basic hardware unless you have money to burn. Most DVD drives (actually they are glorified CD-ROMs with specific movie software to play DVD movies), they will recognize VCDs, no problem. Not sure about standalone units.

[vi5]

2. Thanks for the advice. Maybe I'll start that way...

Although I don't have a digital camcorder, just a mini vhs one. But I can get a transfer box. I didn't know that VCD's were like dvd's. I think my new dvde player plays them. I guess I could try getting used to the software that way and then go from there.

[catzies]

3. I bought the video/dvd combo instead of messing around PC-wise

because that far exceeds my knowledge and capability. It was so much less hassle.

I didn't have a DVD player to begin with, either. And I gave my daughter my old VCR.