Tech Help Needed: How can I burn DVD's from Video8 format?

23 December 2008 | Self

[Lando Lincoln]

Thanks for the guidance!

[Lando Lincoln]

It might be easier just to have some more boys .

;>)

[Kirkwood]

It is actually not that hard at all and kind of fun to do. If you have access to a Sony Vaio computer, they often come bundled with what is called a Vaio Camera Capture Utility to make this easier. But you can do it with any computer. I’m assuming you have a PC.

You first need a hard drive with lots of free space. Then connect the firewire cable from the camera to the computer. Then transfer using WinDV with the camera in playback mode. Once on the computer you can use another free program called Windows Movie Maker (google for it) and then you can edit your scenes and add text and dissolves and special effects. You can also adjust the audio tracks.

When you are happy with it, you then can record to a master file to keep on you hard drive as well as make copies onto DVDs. You will have options for quality and the format and you specify what you want. I assume you want it so you can play it back on a TV DVD player and you can specify that.

I’ve made many 30 to 60 minute DVD videos of my vacations using all free software with added music tracks and it comes out looking great.

[ShadowAce]

[Kirkwood]

Roxie makes good products. That will help if you’ve never burned DVDs before.

[sauropod]

home

[Kirkwood]

Practice doing short clips first. As long as you have the firewire cable and WinDV, you should be all set to get it off the tape and onto your hard drive.

[Lando Lincoln]

If you have access to a Sony Vaio computer...

I do, actually. The PC in my "cave" at home is a Vaio.

[Kirkwood]

Then chances are it has come bundled with audio video software to make this easier. Look under Programs for folders that start with the word VAIO and you should see things like VAIO camera capture utility; VAIO AV utilities; VAIO Media; etc. Some are obvious what they do and some are not well documented. You probably can also download VAIO utilities from the Sony website and they will work on you Sony model. But Roxio may already have everything you need. I use Roxio on my Dell computers and they are good products, but I’ve never actually used Roxio for video transfer off a camera.

[chuckles]

Another option( depends on your final use for the disks) is to buy a cheap DVD player from WalMart that plays DIVX or AVI files. I paid $39 for mine. If the file comes off your camera as AVI, then all you have to do is copy it to disk. Another advantage is I can get about 8 hours of AVI capture on a DVD or 2 hrs on a CD instead of converting it to MPEG and burning 2 hrs of video to a DVD after several hours of converting.

The downside is if a relative wants a copy that has a DVD player that won't play DIVX. You can always convert then to MPEG and make them their own copy.

The movie pirates on the web transfer movies as Divx or avi so it doesn't take as long to transfer. DVD players today usually will play a DIVX or AVI file without conversion. Older players still require MPEG or VOB. Many players today can read RW disks with several formats.

[reevee69]

LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Your reply made me laugh out loud.

[Othniel]

If you have that many of them, go out and buy a DVD/VCR player-burner. You can use the input jack to put the video into the dvd burner, and you can set up menus and such. I used one to convert a bunch of vids that aren't availiable on disc. Worked great. Unless I had a big a$$ hard drive to store it all before dvd burning, that's how I'd do it. Besides, any disc made by the dvd burner can be readily copied onto another disc, as there are no copyrights on them.