OK, I've got my new computer with video capture card, I've looked over most of the posts and can't find a simple "how to" guide for capturing VCR and converting to DVD. Please point me to some plain English resource that will explain the process to me. I'm willing to pay for software that captures my old vcr movies, edit them, add some titles, etc. and then burn them to a DVD. I hope I don't have to worry about "burn rates" and stuff like that. Your help appreciated.
You can't find a simple guide because you are asking how to do a complex task. And if "burn rate" is to complex for you, I'm afraid you won't have much luck.
O.K. so the task is complex. After trying out
dozens of programs that are supposed to convert
home videos (VCR, MPEG-2 etc) to DVD (VOB)
format to burn on to DVD's one is still forced to
screan HELP! Can you at least explain the
complex way so that we can at least "give it a
go".
I am going to abbreviate this greatly... however you should get the general idea.
1) Capture the video. If you do not have a video capture card, drive down to BestBuy and buy one. They all come with software and their own instructions, so you just need to capture all of the video you want to put on the DVD. Save the file... remember that if you sacrifice quality here your DVD will not look good.
2) Most programs will not convert the video directly into DVD (expensive programs, like Adobe Premiere, will), so now you need to convert that video file into a DVD-ready video. Download/Buy the TMPGEnc DVD Author program (http://www.pegasys-inc.com/e_main.html) and start it up. The program is sort-of wizard based, and there is a good help file. Anyway, the program will save to your HD the files necessary to burn to the DVD.
3) Burn the ready-to-go files to a DVD. Using any DVD burning app (Nero is the best), burn the created files (all of them... do not edit them) to a DVD.
That's it... and only 3 steps!
Ok, to be honest, it is a bit more complicated than that, however that is the general idea. The entire process, start to finish, may take 24 hours of computing time alone.
