DVD Recording

[thoots]

Folks,

I have gotten pretty seriously into DVD recording on the computer. If you've got an interest, and some questions, I'll be glad to toss some opinions your way!


:p:

[Wardsweb]

"Talk to me Goose"

I do a lot of CD burning and a lot of DVD buying, so seems like a good thing to get into. What do I need to start?

[THOR]

OOOOOH yeah I could burn all my pRon onto DVD's:smsex:

[Walt]

I'm waiting for the format war to settle and for the DVD writeable devices to come down in price.

From what little I know, it seems like DVD-RW should pull through even though DVD-RAM pretty much has a headstart on the rest at present.

What do you use it for Tom? What is all this video editing that you do (if you don't mind me asking?). Don't tell me you're making a documentary about urban squirrels! :D :D :D

When the price is right I would put a DVD-writeable player (or more likely some sort of HT/DVD PC box) in my setup to replace the VCR.

Just waiting ...

[Walt]

Wow,

You are really conscientious about the way you approach things. Keeping 6 bookshelves worth of VHS tapes ... amazing - I'd be lucky if I have a dozen and they're just old ones that are rapidly deteriorating in terms of quality. One day I will get around to writing them to DVD (I tried tinkering with VCD but it's not very good) when I have a burner.

What types of shows have you recorded? For example, gives us some idea of the contents of the most recent "highlights" DVD you burnt ...

[ProAc_Fan]

Given the price of the blank DVD media I find burning DVD's to be a little too expensive. My solution is to rip the DVD, compress it, convert to MPEG 1 and make a VCD. Then I just play it in my CD-RW drive out through my video card and into the TV. The picture quality is much better than a VHS tape and the price is about $1 for the 2 blank CD-R's required.


Mike

[SolderIron]

>Given the price of the blank DVD media I find burning DVD's to be a little too expensive. My solution is to rip the DVD, compress it, convert to MPEG 1 and make a VCD.

ProAc_Fan,

What is the process or program you use to go from DVD to VCD?
Recently, I bought a DVD R/W drive for my puter. I got the drive for under $200. DVD media is about $3 a shot and CD is much cheaper at $9 for a 100.

[House de Kris]

Originally posted by ProAc_Fan
Given the price of the blank DVD media I find burning DVD's to be a little too expensive. My solution is to rip the DVD, compress it, convert to MPEG 1 and make a VCD. Then I just play it in my CD-RW drive out through my video card and into the TV. The picture quality is much better than a VHS tape and the price is about $1 for the 2 blank CD-R's required.


Mike
I really don't get why people keep saying DVD media is so expensive. From what I read above, CD-Rs are said to be .50 each (2 blank for a buck). DVD media is currently 3.5 to 5 per disk. I recently paid $2.50 per disk in a pack. Assuming those 50 cent CD-Rs are 700MB, then the equivalent price for a DVD would be $3.36 (keeping pennies per byte equivalent). Hey, just about where prices are today! And, they will get cheaper.

I remember when CD recorders first came out. Blank media was $25. I recall buying a bunch of $5 CDRs because the price was so good.

ProAc_Fan-
Since you use your computer to play your VCDs instead of your DVD player, you could compress your movies to MPEG4, use a lot less space and look somewhat better. To me, VCD is just too much of a compromise. If you can go for more discs per movie, then CVD is a very good improvement over VCD.

[reyneman]

Actually, the last 100 CR-Rs I bought on special at Office Max were $0.08 each:cool:

[ProAc_Fan]

Solder Iron just do a google search for DVD to VCD and you'll find step by step instructions and software to rip the DVD, compress it down to fit on 2 CD-R's and burn it. I agree if you didn't compress it down to about 1.5MB then burning to CD wouldn't be cost effective. That's why you MUST compress the video. When blank DVD's cost less then $1 and the writers are less than $300 then I'll start burning DVD's.

Mike

[SolderIron]

House de Kris,

Yes, $ per bit wise DVD is not out of line with CD. Most of the time I don't have anything big enough to require a DVD. Anything that will fit in a CD is not cost effective to use a DVD. The way prices drop, not a good idea to stock up on more than you can use at the moment. I gave away hundreds of never openned 1.2M floppies, I still have several lifetime supplies of 1.4Ms :( .

ProAC_Fan,
I will go search. Compressing from DVD to 1.5meg is a good scheme.

[botrytis]

As stated by Pro-Ac, until the DVD standard war is over, I will not buy a DVD burner. Many of the new DVD players (not on computers) cannot play burned DVD's anyway :puke: . This is due to the DMCA and to protect the manufacturers - my Rotel 1080 will not play any recorded media :cry: . Oh well!

Right now the only DVD recorder worth getting is the Sony DRU-500AX because it can all of the formats but I will not pay over 350 dollars for it.

I guess I will wait!

I think MPEG-4 is the way to go. Excellent compression without the loss of picture quality.

Dave

[SolderIron]

botrytis,
My 3 weeks old Panasonic DVD player cannot playback play the DVD from the DVD+R/RW burner either.:mad: I saw some new DVD players recently that can work with either +RW or -R. Table top DVD player is cheaper than a burner so I think a player that can handle both + and - formats is the way to go.

[botrytis]

That is why I have an HTPC setup in my system :boink: . It is the easiest way to deal with this problem. Besides, I use it as a tuner, mp3 player, and computer video playback system for my plasma screen :D YEAH BABY!

Dave

[zobsky]

hi, can you post detailed specs of your HTPC, ..... i have an athlon socket A 1GHz , 256MB of DDR memory and a spare DVD ROM left over from an upgrade and i'm thinking of putting all this into a HTPC.


thanks

[botrytis]

Basically, I have - http://us.shuttle.com/specs2.asp?pro_id=76

This is one of the micro-PC with a DVD, 80 GB IBM HD, floppy, ATI Radeon 9000 Pro, and an AVER media AverTV studio PVR card (used for the tuner for the Pioneer Plasma). I am using a 1.8 GHz P4 w 512K cache and 512 MB DDR 2100 memory. OS is Win XP Pro. I am also using a wireless keyboard with built in mouse.

Dave

[zobsky]

exactly what i needed to know, .... seems like a good way to go rather than selling away my spare parts for peanuts.



from these posts, .. the advantages of a HTPC are
1. PVR capabilities
2. ability to create / watch avi files
3. browse the WWW from TV (not sure if this is an advantage though :) )

the one q. i still have is,
how is the picture / sound quality (for the purpose of watching movies) compared to a regular DVD player)?


thanks

[botrytis]

Since I have a Rotel DVD, I haven't tried it yet. AVI's amd MPG's look and sound fine (dependent on source recorded from). Make sure you get a PVR card which does hardware encoding and noe software because you might be CPU limited.

Websurfing on a big screen is a Hoot and Strange at the same time. It can overwhelm you at times.

Dave