Newb needs a little help - HD to DVD conversion

1. Hookem
   Member

   

   I just bought an HD camcorder, the Canon Vixia HV30, and am now trying to figure out the best way to make DVDs. The camera captures in HDV format to mini-DV.

   Honestly I'm not a videophile, and much of the process of trying to figure out the best bitrate, etal, gives me a bit of tired head. I fought this battle when I bought my first SD camera a few years ago. Several freeware apps and a lot of wasted DVDs later I finally had a finished product. But the process of getting there was very time-consuming.

   I'm sure that throwing HD into the mix makes it even more challenging. So I'm looking for the best way to get HDV -> DVD. I've looked at options that include various Software Suites to DVD Recorders and one special-use docking station.

   I have an HDTV that shows in 1080i. I have a DVD player that upscales to 720p. I do not have a blu-ray player (or of course burner). I realize that without having a blu-ray burner that I won't be able to get 1080 resolution.

   So I'm aware of most of the basics, I just don't know enough about the hardware or software options to make an educated pick. I want to buy something, whatever will allow me to plug in the camera, transfer video, burn DVD where I lose the least amount of resolution in the conversion.

   Thanks

   Posted 3 years ago #

2. ralck
   Member

   

   Hi there!

   Your camera gets great reviews so I think you made a great choice!

   One thing though, you can't easily put HD footage on a regular DVD.  DVD's have a maximum bitrate of a little over 10MB/s.  If you compressed HD footage to that bitrate I would think it would look terrible.  I'm not even sure it would be watchable at that bitrate.

   I think what you'll want to do is down convert your footage in your editor of choice.  This should allow you to use a program like DVD Architect Studio to make DVD's that look pretty great.

   If you choose that, later, when you get a Blu-Ray burner, you can go back to the project and output it in HD for a Blu-Ray disc.

   This is just one option, there are others, like recording directly in SD, but I think option "A" I described will give you better results.

   Posted 3 years ago #

3. Hookem
   Member

   

   Thanks for the input.

   I guess the first step is finding an editor of my choice since I'm not really familiar with them. I downloaded two demos today and got mixed results.

   Cyberlink's PowerDirector 7.0 had a fairly intuitive interface with the DVD maker integrated. However the video capture was horrible. I wasn't sure where the breakdown was and if I needed to alter the settings or not. It looked like they had a lot of the modifications turned off for the demo. Either way the video was extremely choppy, sometimes blurry, and would hang for seconds at a time. Also, the audio cut out halfway through and gave a loud static noise.

   Pinnacle Studio didn't appear to have a demo.

   Sony Vegas with Architect gave me the best result. The video capture was pretty good, and the resulting DVD turned out with very good resolution. It had the occasional momentary blip or skip, but overall it was worked really well.

   Posted 3 years ago #

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