Nimbus

Hi,

I will be buying a Digital 8 camcorder soon and was wondering if there is anyway I can creat a VideoCD from it via my PC so I can play it on a DVD. Do I need a special cd-writer or editing s/w for this? I've not got the DVD player yet, but am I right in thinking that most will play VideoCDs? I was just looking for some way to save and play digital video without reverting to analog tapes.

Anyone know of a good BBS/fourum for this kind of thing?

Cheers

mega_stream

Get a firewire card on your PC..
Plenty Plenty HDD space on your PC..
Adobe Premier..
DVD Re-Writer (Pioneer doing one for under £500 on

Nimbus

Ecxellent reply guys

Mega,

Also looking to buy another HDD for the PC. Got about 20GB left at the moment. Not sure how much I'm going to need.


Paul,

Thanks for your commets. Very usefull info. I was already concidering the Pyro s/w from LinxDV so will probably go for the U-Lead DVD plugin that you mention as well.

The Cyberhome DVD player looks great value. How would you rate the playback quality on it for your own miniDVDs and standard DVDs? Did you need to do anything to it to allow you to play back your one miniDVDs or was it OK out of the box?

Thanks again guys.

pwebb

you can do this fairly economically -
an ADS pyro 1394 firewire card for circa £60 - comes with media studio pro softare for editing - buy the extra U-lead dvd plugin software ($50 upgrade) and you can write dvd format to a standard CD-R - way better quality than vcd or svcd - this is sometimes called mini-dvd and is readable on any PC based system - you need to exercise care when buying a dvd player to play these discs - all the machines coming out of china + taiwan that are based on PC dvd-rom drives - an example would be the excellent cyberhome adl 528 - available from second spin in the uk for just £110 - I am using the above combination to write my own 20 minute dvds and they are excellent -
imho dvd-ram and dvd-r drives are way too expensive still and the blank media is a silly price.

Nimbus

Paul,

Just another quick question. I assume you are using a standard CD writer to burn the miniDVDs onto CD-R's? Or do you need a DVD writer?

Thanks

pwebb

standard cd-r is all you need to write the cds - what's more you can play these back on any pc with a cd-rom + dvd player software (e.g power dvd) - you don't need a dvd-rom.

the adl-528 plays these disks back out of the box - a trick that afreey, encore and others can also do - the drive must be a dual laser unit that can play PC formatted cd-rs as well as dvd- discs - because you are using the pc to write the discs they will be read by the drive in cd-r mode NOT dvd - this limits the speed of the drive - e.g. a 4 x dvd player is usually a 40x cd-rom thus you can work out wht bit rate it can cope with - I am encoding my .mpegs at 6.144 mb/sec using media studio pro - whilst the dvd fromat goes up to 9.6 mb/sec it is unlikely you will get a drive that can read at this rate in cd-rom mode (though they can all do it in dvd mode) - that is fine however as the quality is quite good enough at 6 mb/sec.

Of the cyberhome dvd - it is nothing short of fantastic for the money - plays any kind of disc inclusind picture cd, mp3 files writtent on a cd-r, dvd, svcd, mini-dvd you name it - the chipset is the lux sonor 528 - which has built in DTS and dolby digital and the cyberhome has a full set of outputs on the back including optical and coaxial and 6 separate audio channels for input to home cinema amps.
the only thing I would question is the sony camera - why digital8? - DV is far superior and a more universal standard - yopu may have probs controlling the sony from the PC via firewire (check out the ADStech support pages for test results) - unless you have a big back catalogue of Hi-8 tapes that you want to be able to keep/read on the new camera, I would go for a DV camera every time - preference being for canon or panasonic. Also bear in mind that not many uk dv cameras have DV-in capability but can be enabled with widgets from datavision in huddersfield

phew

Paul W ;-)
Paul W

Nimbus

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the detailed report . Given me lots to think about.

The only reason I'm going for digital 8 instead of DV is cost. I don't have much in the way of old Hi8 tapes. I will be getting the DVin enabled by LinxDV (they offer this free when you purchase Pyro). I wanted to find a camera with a good spec but leave me enough money to buy all the extra kit I've been talking about.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:<HR>
you may have probs controlling the sony from the PC via firewire (check out the ADStech support pages for test results)
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Whey do I find the ADS tech support pages?

Cheers

pwebb

Nimbus

Paul,

I'll be using Win98 SE. I checked the compatability list and the camcorder I'm considering is not listed . I think I'll contact LynxDV and get some advice from them on this.

Cheers mate.


[This message has been edited by Nimbus (edited 09 October 2001).]