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Dvd Editing Software


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Guys - looking for some advice. I have recently bought a miniDV camera - a JVC GR-DX107ex. It's a fantastic little camera, the actual recording quality is very good.

I do basic movie capture/recording for my son and his music group (he's only 12 but into indian classical music - can you believe it!)

Now the problem - I use Roxio 8 for creating DVD's of his performances - which is actually very good for editing the video. I need something more supstantial as the picture quality gets "grained" when rendering, but also as it''s a hobby I don't want to spend mega bucks. Can anyone recommend any decent software?

Also, some people recommend importing the video using Win Movie maker, but I find that the sound quality ain't great.

The PC I have is an HP T series, Mutli Media centre PC, 2.8ghz, 1g RAM, 400gb hdd and Win XP. The machine has Firewire, s-video and composite cards already built in - I tend to use the composites - so any experience of what input to use too would be good.

Any ideas on what is the best software - I need to be able to create menus' slideshows of pictures etc too?

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composites will give your the poorest picture quality you really should be using the firewire socket for the best quality, Ive only used windows movie maker and I really havent noticed any sound quality issues. the files will be huge tho. windows movie maker is quite basic but it gets you into video editing. the best low price software i have used is sony's Vegas movie studio+dvd. very nice.

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Agree with Brettster there, it's not the software its the composite that's causing the graining - get yourself a quality firewire cable and that will sort it out.

As far as software goes, I use this: Roxio ProHD

It's an awesome bit of software, but prob a bit of overkill for ordinary editing - the latest version of Easy Media Creator should do everything you need :)

Btw, what kind of music does he play just out of curiosity? I do a bit of that myself..... :whistling:

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Agree with Brettster there, it's not the software its the composite that's causing the graining - get yourself a quality firewire cable and that will sort it out.

As far as software goes, I use this: Roxio ProHD

It's an awesome bit of software, but prob a bit of overkill for ordinary editing - the latest version of Easy Media Creator should do everything you need :)

Btw, what kind of music does he play just out of curiosity? I do a bit of that myself..... :whistling:

Cheers guys - I'll take a closer look - just need to find a place I can get the right cable for the Camcorder. It has both small USB and the JVC own socket.

Parthiban - he plays the Tabla - been learning since he was 7 and he is really into it. He's actually quite good now for a 12 year old, and was taught by the late (and very great) Gurmit Singh Virdee (also the leading Tabla teacher and respected promotor of Tabla in the UK) - one of the things I want to do is a get a Vid onto youtube.com...then you can see him play!!

You can check out this site:

www.darbar.org.uk

The Darbar concert is a must if you have a an interest - Rimpa Shiva will be performing this year!! What do you play?

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I'm probably a bad person to ask as I do this for a living (hence the nickname !!) and I work with pro gear and software all day but.....

If you are capturing via composite you are working in the worst possible resolution (apart from via an rf modulator it doesn't get any worse!!).

Since it's an SD DV camcorder your best course would be to capture via firwire to a program that will edit in Native DV. This will give you the advantage of working in the format as it comes out of the camera and not subject to recompression and thus losing quality. Any of the editing software that allow you to work in native DV will do an okay job and they should then allow you to export out so you can author a DVD. Bear in mind though as soon as you export out your masterpiece to build your DVD you will be compressing to MPEG2 and all the associated 'proplems' that can bring. This is why it's important to capture and edit in the best resolution you can and then export.

Two Programs I can recommend are Premiere Pro (for editing) and Adobe Encore (for DVD authoring)... the only thing is... they are not cheap !! There are an abundance of budget 'editing' software packages out there but as I say, I'm probably not the best person to recommend them as I don't use them. The important thing is make sure it will capture in native DV (via firewire) and make sure it will edit in native DV. Your export options for MPEG will be customisable but again the end result is only as good as the alogrithms in the codecs.

Hope I've been of some sort of help - If you want to know anything else just ask

Happy Editing

Regards

The Editor

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Has Premiere got any simpler to use in recent times? I originally used Premiere but found it an absolute pig to use if you were an amateur just looking to put home videos on a DVD.....

That's why I started using the Roxio software as mentioned above, which seems to be essentially Premiere and Encore rolled into one - doubt it has as much functionality, but more than enough for normal use, plus its relatively simple to use. Haven't used it a lot, but with the DVDs I've made so far, the quality is pretty good when using the highest quality setting for everything - it's only marginally worse than the actual DV footage (which I was pretty pleased with), so much so that most people probably wouldn't notice.

I'm interested to know whether Premiere is simpler now and would provide better quality output though........

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Premiere Pro 2.0 has a totally different interface to earlier versions although I wouldn't necessarilly call it more 'user friendly' There is enhanced functionality embedded within it now including direct MPEG export from the timeline (again this isn't really an issue in the pro arena as two or three types of software may be used before you even get to the stage of authoring a DVD.

Quality is no different from earlier versions but would be superior to 'domestic software' if you are talking about DV as this is the point I am making above - you are working in the native format and thus not losing any quality within the editing process (other than the standard DV compression ratio of 5:1 and colour sampling of 4:1:1). The advantage Premiere Pro gives over and above 'domestic software' is the ability to work in Native HD (assuming your machine is fast enough !!!)

Cheers

The Ed

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Ok thanks, I'll have to give that a look in then. Forgive my overall lack of knowledge here, but when you capture the video off the camera to the computer, what kind of file does Premiere create?

I've always thought that when I capture the video to those huge AVI files, that I was using native video (but I don't know much about this so am most likely wrong!)

Also does Premiere/Encore have bluray support now then as well?

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