400 to DVD Conversions?

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Can any one help? I have a Matrox 400 cature card and have just bought a Pioneer DVD (DVR-A03) writer. Does anyone have any quick start advice as I want to transfer my VHS collection to DVD-R.

I think the process is:

1 Capture Video into MS Studio Pro Timeline and Trim / Edit. (First Question - Is the Matrox PAL settings OK for DVD Authoring?) (Second Question - Does AVI_IO have any advantages over Matrox own capture?)

2 Export to MPEG2. What is the best - Quickest way to encode? (I have heard TMPGEnc is good.......)

3 Use DVD authoring software to write DVD. (Can anyone suggest good Freeware/Cheap solution?)

Thanks for any help - suggestions or pointing to good how to sites

[Brian Ellis]

Easter Bunny will be bring me a DVR-AO3, but I have made quite a number of VCDs and SVCDs, which use the same process.

1. If you capture using the Marvel or RRG (?), you can then edit using MSPro, as you suggest. You can capture and edit using the Matrox MJPEG as AVI files. You have 3 ways of capturing: a) the native so-called PC-VCR; b) the capture proggie within MSPro; c) a third party proggie such as AVI_IO. All work, but I find AVI-IO gives you more control over what you are doing, including stitchless joining of sequences exceeding a given file size. It is also possible to capture with a software codec but this creates more hassle for a beginner and the advantage of potentially better quality is negated by your VHS source.

2. Once you have finished editing, etc., you can then use your MSPro 6.5 (or 6.0 + the downloaded DVD Plug-in) to do all the rest. This is the simplest, quickest and best way, again bearing in mind that your VHS source isn't miraculously going to give you full DVD quality. All you have to do is Create an mpg file, using the preset for the appropriate DVD format. When that is done, you Export to DVD. This creates, in two steps, an image file at first and it then burns your DVD disc. All this can be quite a lengthy process, depending on the resources in your computer.

3. You don't need any other DVD authoring software, although you may consider Ulead DVD Movie Factory as worthwhile for about 50 bucks. It can act either as a standalone or as a plug-in for MSPro. Its main advantage over the DVD plug-in, which it replaces, is that you can have multiple MPG source files, but it also offers more flexibility with menus and a greater choice of standard menu templates.

As an aside, if any one project is less than about 30 minutes, you may consider it better to burn an SVCD rather than a DVD: the quality is better than your source VHS, so you lose nothing, and it's a lot cheaper. However, not all stand-alone DVD players will accept SVCDs, although most modern ones do, so do a test first.