Page 1 of Here is a tough one!!

Howdy all

A friend of mine asked me the other day about transfering her home movies to DVD. She does not have any equipment at present apart from a PC ,a DVD player and a cast for the movie(her dog). What is the best route?
She is interested in getting a DV camera , how would she transfer this to be able to play it in her DVD ? I thought the best route would be to somehow link her camera up to her PC and copy the film to a CDR. (if only life was that simple) I have since realised that this sounded like I have not got a clue!! Would she be better off copying to a CDR in VCD format(is this even possible?)Obviously she would need all sorts of compression software.
Can anyone even follow me on this as I am starting to lose it myself !!

Her solution was to buy an old "home movie" type camera as there is somewhere in the USA that will transfer this stuff to DVD for her , but I now have to find out if what I said to her was possible!!

Thanks
G

Gordon,

If she purchases a camcorder with DV in/out then it is possible to easily transfer her video back and forth from her camera to her PC via Firewire. There is a software editing package available called Pinnacle Studio DV that is an editing package that includes a basic firewire card and cable and also has the inbuilt ability to write vcd`s, svcd`s and maybe even DVD`s though I am not quite certain on the DVD front.
The reason I know all this is that I have just researched buying a new camcorder and have come across some excellent advice and websites.
Any other questions just let me know!

Mike

Yup you advised her correctly in the first case. Buy a DV Camera - Tansfer via Firewire to the PC - You will need a LARGE HardDrive though. Us any number of editing software ( Inc in Windows XP ! ). Then burn using either a CDR/W or DVD Burner - Depending on whats available. CDR/W`s are from £35 and DVD Burners are From £200 the choice is yours ......

G