Thread: Question for the experts!

This may be a long explanation, but I'll try to keep it quick.
Used Power Director 6.0 to edit kids' DisneyWorld footage (so it's very important that I get this to SOMETHING readable). I wasn't able to burn the DVD w/o getting error messages w/ Power Director. I managed to save it as an mpg2 file using Power Direcotr. However, I cannot burn that file to a data DVD and be able to read it. It burns fine, just can't read the DVD file on my computer.
Since that time, I have converted BACK from Vista to XP after dealing w/ Vista's misery for 6 months. I have deleted the captured footage from my HDD (still on tape though) b/c it was holding approx 40GB worth of valuable space.

I need to know if I can get it to a DVD (doesn't have to necessarily be stand-alone player readable), just computer DVD drive readable format. At this point, I will take it any way I can get it, I just want it off my drive so that I can reformat, start FRESH w/ XP and get my programs back to where they were.

If I have to buy another video editing program and start from scratch, I will be very disappointed. Please help, I have tried many trial programs (avi2divx, nero, etc) promising to turn my frown upside down to no avail.

PLEASE HELP!!! I don't know where else to turn!!!

You say your video is on tape so I presume you are using a mini dv camcorder. Did you use the Firewire connection to connect the camcorder to the computer? If you did then the video should have been captured as an .avi file, which you then edit and when you are happy with the way it looks and sounds (I have never used PowerDirector - I must download a trial version sometime and see what it's like) you then burn it onto a blank DVD. Download a 30 day trial version of Adobe Premiere Elements 3 and see how you get on or any of the popular editors listed on this forum. I've gone back to XP aswell, apart from all the hardware I have connected up to the computer working on XP, it is much faster at starting up and shutting down aswell. It's disappointing that after a year, Vista still hasn't won more people over.

As mentioned earlier, the footage has since been deleted from the HDD. I still have the tapes of the footage though. I guess I will have to resort to doing it all over again. BTW, that trip was over 2 years ago and I JUST got it completed after working on it every now and then. I can hardly wait to begin! :(

You mentioned several things in just a few words which can get me confused easily.

Sounds like you deleted the "raw" unedited captured video - too bad.

Sounds like you still have the mpeg2 version of that captured video - is that correct? OR did you edit and then render as mpeg2 which you still have?

Are you saying you now have XP with the latest version of Windows Media Player and it won't recognize and play your mpeg files?

As already suggested I would download a trial of one of the more popular three consumer editing programs - Adobe, Pinnacle or (my favorite) ULead Video Studio.

Could be you should also ask around your circle of friends or office co-workers to see what editing software came "free" bundled with their DVD PC "burners".

Try to open your mpeg file in one or more editing programs and see if the program recognizes and supports your file type and will load and play the file.

If it still won't play then I suggest you open your file in a transcode utility like mediacoder (free online and very useful to have).

Media coder will open most any file and give a complete detailed analysis of the file - file type, codec, resolution and etc.

Finally I suggest that you recapture all of your scenes from your tape again. Sounds like you have between 3 and 4 hours of video when captured as .avi from a dv camcorder source.

I'm a bit nutty about archiving video but IMO you can't archive enough to completely protect valuable home/family memories.

After a few experiences like yours I have a routine - I capture as avi. I open those avi files and chop them into disc sized segments and save them back out as avi data discs carefully labeled.

Then I do my editing and when project is ready I render as mpeg2 file. I burn these mpeg2 files to dvd data discs.

Then I open my editing files in a dvd authoring program (I really like Sonic's DVDitPE) for the final step of chapter menu creation and transcode to vob and burn.

With the above you have reasonably priced yet pretty reilable storage in non-dvd file formats so that either you - or your grandchildren - can revisit the raw images and re-edit or whatever - great for family archives plus you have a playable dvd that is edited with chapter menus to watch and share. (I also put the tapes in a very safe place but, alas, even sitting they deteriorate day-by-day and with every pass over a read head).

Final thought, if you re-edit again from scratch you will probably at the end of the process feel like you did a better job and probably include scenes that you somehow missed the first time around.
goodluck