I have been uploading hi8 footage through my Sony DV camcorder and onto my computer using Roxio Videowave Creator.

The footage is around 84mins

I tried uploading in mpeg format = 3.4 gig

And in AVI format = 15 gig

I then created and edited the movie seperately using both formats and rendered the file (which took forever)

The finished files varied depending on what i wanted the end file to be. I managed to put it in mpeg which made it a smaller file but when i then tried to make put it on a home tv dvd it doubled in size and would not fit on a 4.7 gig disc. I did manage to get one format (mpeg2 which was 850mb file, but then went to 4.2 gig once i made it to a dvd) but the sound was very low, you could only just hear it when the tv was on full volume.

What software is available to me that can compress or make my home movies smaller but still with a decent amount of quality. Surely i could fit more then 84mins of edited home movies on a 4.7gig dvd.

I currently have Roxio Videowave Creator, Windows Movie Maker, Sonic MyDVD, Nero Express 6 (Nero OEM) and FlaskMPEG. I have spent many frustrating hours rendering different formats and using different programs with no luck. Any help with the software i've got, all what i need to get (Freeware preferably) would be much appreciated.

I have over 15 hrs of home movies in which i want to edit, add music and titles and edit into maybe 2 or 3 short 1hr movies (each to fit on seperate dvds). If i could get any help as to what format to upload, what format to render the file and what format to make to put on 4.7 gig dvds.
Any help is much appreciated.

Cheers,

Paul

To get the best quality you should capture the footage in AVI, then edit and render in AVI, then encode to MPEG2 for the DVD.

This thread in the DVD bit of the forums might help: http://www.videoforums.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=380, it explains what you can do to fit your video onto a DVD-r,

I use TMPGEnc to encode my files to DVD compliant Mpeg2 (free here: http://www.tmpgenc.net/e_download.html but Mpeg2 encoding is limited to 1 month), I find it gives good quality, and you should be able to fit 85 minutes onto a 4.7Gb dvd no problem.

I don't know much about the software you've got, I've used Sonic MyDVD a couple of times with MPEG2 source footage from VHS, and it worked fine, I can't remember if I needed to tell it not to transcode, if you're capturing in MPEG2 make sure it's DVD compliant, then you wont have to re-encode it to put it on a DVD.

Hope this helps, or at least gives you somewhere to start.

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