Yes you will be able to play your dvd's on a 'bog standard' dvd player. I wouldn't copy the camcorder footage directly to dvd, you need to edit out all the wonky shots and give it a bit of pizzaz. Some titles at the start and end, some music, maybe a few transitions wouldn't go a miss.

One hour of video will take up around 13GB of storage on your hard disk, use the internal hard disk for capture and temporary storage and when you are done with a project transfer all the files then to your external hard drive, just in case you want to revisit that same project in six months time. It will also save you time having to locate and recapture the same tape(s) again.

Along with downloading the free 30 day trials of the big named software, I have a thread in the Forum Announcements section called 'Free Stuff', which has a list of freeware software, give it a look and see if there is anything in there that you could use aswell.

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