Total Recorder - Video to DVD Transfer Service

Having trouble with a laptop running Windows Vista and Sigmatel audio drivers not allowing you to use stereo mix or "what you hear" for recording? Here's the solution:

Download and install Total Recorder here http://www.totalrecorder.com/ (sorry, it's not free). During the installation allow Total Recorder to install it's own audio drivers and you will once again be able to record "what you hear" using the Total Recorder program. So far, it's the only solution we've found that doesn't involve majorly messing up your registry with registry edits.

Many times in doing video to dvd transfer, editing is necessary first. Being able to record audio from a file while you are watching it and later adding to to a video edit is now possible again, even though Dell and Sigmatel don't make it easy!

mp3DirectCut - Video to DVD Transfer Service

mp3DirectCut is a freeware program that allows you to edit mp3 files without any loss of quality. Cut, splice, shorter--whatever you need for your video to dvd transfer or video editing project. You do not need to decompress the file. Records mp3 direct to disc.

You can download the free program from the author's homepage:
http://mpesch3.de1.cc/

Pinnacle Studio 12 Ultimate Upgrade - Video to DVD Transfer

Pinnacle Studio 12 Ultimate will be released in early June 2008 and is available for pre-order. In addition to the video to dvd transfer capabilities and video editing capabilities Pinnacle Studio is known for, the new edition features the following:

New Plugins: new title plugins that allow for much more professional titles; new lighting effects; new transitions.

Pinnacle Montage: built in templates that allow photos and videos to appear on the same frames--looking at the demo, it's very impressive.

Simplified web publishing to upload your videos to Youtube.

Ability to output movies that you create to Sony PSP, iPod, DivX, 3GP, Flash.

Custom markers that enable you to make easier navigation of your project as well as precise timing.

New Audio Controls: you can create your own soundtrack for your project using digital audio controls.

Digital Media Converter - Video to DVD Transfer Service

Digital Media Converter allows you to convert DVD, VCD, CD, AVI, DivX, MPEG4, MPEG, MPEG2, MP3, 3GP, MOV, WMV, WMA, and WAV files. It also enables batch conversion.

Good program if you need to convert between video files for your video to dvd transfer project.

Unfortunately, it's not free.

Video Caster - free - Video to DVD Transfer Service

Video Caster is a freeware program that allows you to publish and share your videos and photos on the internet. You can capture the video footage from your camcorder, create video and photo slideshows of your photos, and convert any of your previously imported or transferred video footage to formats appropriate for uploading to the internet.

Video Caster has an automatic setting which will create a video slideshow of your photos, including many different visual styles, and allows you to add any music you wish to your photo slideshow.

The program will import your video footage from any digital video camera (through firewire) and allows you to convert MPEG, AVI, MP3 and WMV files to streaming video.

Vista Codec Package - Video to DVD Transfer Service

Vista Codec Package includes filters and codecs that help you play your video and audio files. If you've ever had a message that says your computer is unable to play a video or audio file, this should take care of the problem. It will also help in your video to dvd transfer projects and works with your dvd creation software.

The Vista Codec Package gives you the choice of what is and is not installed, so you can just install what you need. There is no media player included with the download.

Only for use with computers running Vista. You can download the Vista Codec Package here:

http://www.afterdawn.com/software/video_software/codecs_and_filters/vista_codec_package.cfm

FFDSHOW Codec - Video to DVD Transfer Service

FFDSHOW is a filter for decoding that decompresses the most popular video formats. It works with DivX video, XviD video, WMV video, MPEG-1 video and MPEG-2 video files. The filter also takes care of decoding the most popular audio formats such as AC3, DTS, and MP3. It assists greatly in your video to dvd project and video editing files.

This codec also assists in the processing of your files into MPEG-4.

You can download the latest FFDSHOW filter here (make sure you choose the most recent STABLE verstion):

http://www.afterdawn.com/software/video_software/codecs_and_filters/ffdshow.cfm

New Cyberlink Video and DVD Software - Video to DVD Transfer

Just purchased these--decent so far. Here are the software packages and what they do:

1. PowerDVD Ultra: basically it's software used to play dvds on your computer (like Roxio's Cineplayer). Good for playing High-Definition Video on your computer:

HD DVDs and Blu-ray Discs
Hardware acceleration for high-definition graphics processors
Playback of high-def file formats H.264, HD MPEG-2, and WMV-HD
Support for widescreen monitors
Overlayed menus, movie bookmarks, and zooming
Movie commentaries displayed in Picture-in-Picture
High-definition audio technologies with Dolby Digital Plus, TrueHD, DTS-HD
8-channel surround sound and support with true 7.1 channel Dolby Digital EX and 5.1 channel DTS
Advanced audio effects from Dolby, DTS, and CyberLink
Auto dialog looping
Move subtitles from the movie screen
Power saving and auto-adjusting playback speed

2. PowerDirector 6: for editing and creating video presentations and slideshows, fixing and improving videos, 300 special effects and style, importing of high definition content (including AVCHD), web publishing to YouTube and Streamload. Includes:

29 dvd template designs
Custom dvd template designs
slideshow wizard for your photos
PIP designer
Subtitling
Movie wizard that automates the video creation process
MagicStyle
MagicFix that enhances and stabilizes your video production
MagicClean that helps clean up the lighting in your video project
Transitions and effects
Balloons, titles
Burn to dvd, output to iPod or PSP, write to HDV tape, or upload online

3. MediaShow4: enhances and edits videos and photos automatically, make animated slideshows timed to the music you select, burn your projects to dvd, and upload options for Flickr and YouTube.

4. Power2Go: basically disc burning software.
Burn data files to Blu-Ray and HD
Make video and photo dvds
Burn audio CDs
Rip MP3s
Allows you to add disc encryption for you data dvds

5. PowerProducer 5: produce your own dvds from regular or high-def video, author regular or blu-ray dvds, edit and enhance videos and photos

Capture regular and high-def video to your computer
DVD menus and themes
Edit, trim and add special effects, button, titles, etc. to video and dvd menu
Burn to dvd, blu-ray

6. DVD Suite 6 Ultra: a combination package that includes PowerDVD 7.3, PowerProduer 4.2, PowerDirector 6.5, Power2Go Deluxe, PowerBackup, InstantBurn, MediaShow3, PowerDVD Copy, LabelPrint, and PhotoNow

The only bad part is that with the DVD Suite 6 Ultra, not every program included is the latest version available (pretty dumb on their part). We upgraded to the latest PowerDirector and PowerProducer.

Adobe Photoshop Express - Video to DVD Transfer Service

The new free online photo editing service Adobe Photoshop Express can be used on photos that you are going to include in your video production, whether it's for titles or to add still images to your video production.
If you sign up you get 2GB of free storage. After you join, upload your photo. Once your photo is uploaded, double click on the photo in the album, then click on "edit photo". On the left side of the screen you can choose between crop and rotate, auto correct, exposure, red-eye removal, touchup, saturation, white balance, highlight, fill light, sharpen, soft focus, pop color, hue, black and white, tint, sketch, and distort.

Once your photo is ready, click on save and then download it to use in your video to dvd project, video editing project or video project.

Jumpcut - Free Online Video Editor - Video to DVD Transfer

Jumpcut was a free internet service that allows you to upload video clips directly from your computer or your video camera. On the main menu of Jumpcut you simply click the Upload button and pick the files you want to upload.

The site them makes a movie from the files that you have uploaded, and then takes you to a browser-based video editor. From there you can arrange the clips, add photos, create titles, and insert special effects.

When you register you also get a free personal uploading email address. You can send emails to this address with attachments and they will be added to your library on the site.

If you use flickr's photo site, you can also import your photos from there as well as facebook.

From the video editor, you can drag and drop photos from your video/photo/media library on their site using "Add". You then simply drag and drop the files in the order that you want them to appear. There is a trimming tool, a button to add audio to your video project, an "add transitions" button, and "special effects".

Unfortunately, jumpcut is no longer in business.

Roxio Easy Media Creator 10 Suite

Roxio vastly improved their creator suite over version 9. If you order the download version so you can use it right away, either purchase the extended download option OR burn the two files (program file and extras) to a CD or DVD.

Website: http://www.roxio.com/

Some of the features included in the software package:

-Create movies with CineMagic and skip the editing
-32-track timeline editor
-Much improved Hollywood-style DVD menus
-Create custom on-screen dvd menus with background audio
-Correct photo exposure, sharpness and color saturation
-Turn photos into black & white, sepia or watercolor
-Create video clips on iPod, PSP, and mobile phone
-Transfer music, photos and video from your mobile phone to PC and back.
-Back up photos, video, music and data to CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray Discs, HD DVD discs, external or network drives and shared devices
-Scheduled backups
-Secure data with encryption and password-protection
-Create large files or projects across multiple discs
-Copy data, audio, photo and video CDs and DVDs including Blu-ray and HD-DVD discs.
-Copy DVD movies from 9 GB of video to a standard 4.7 GB DVD

More details:

- Convert audio files to various formats (batch files also)
- Rip CDs from multiple drives
- Capture internet radio or PC audio (Vista)
- Copy audio and video from an iPod to your PC
- Convert audio and video files to different formats
- Use your hard drive as a playlist
- convert LPS and cassette to digital formats
- Audio track identification
- CD audio transitions
- CD compilations across multiple CDs
- VST plug-ins
- Organize photos
- Edit video on a timeline
- Auto-fix video color, contrast and brightness in photos
- Add multiple 2D and 3D effects to photos
- Adjust photo duration and speed
- Overlay multiple images, text or video clips with photos
- Picture-in-picture effects
- Photo slideshows with music (standard or high definition)
- Add SmartSound soundtrack to slideshows and movies
- Capture and edit HD video
- Auto-fix cell phone photos
- Mobile phone photos without borders or bars
- Upload video to YouTube
- Advanced DVD Creation
- Create compilation DVDs from DVD-Video, DivX and WMV files
- Produce DVDs with motion menus, buttons and text
- DVD menu styles for many occasions
- DVD menu options
- Text editing with motion, rotation and 3D controls
- Menu-to-menu and title-to-menu transitions
- Camcorder video to a DVD in one click
- Play commercial DVD-ROM movies, DVD and VCD titles
- InterActual content support
- Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound
- Pro Logic
- VGA Optimizer
- Burn data to HD DVD disc
- Copy discs in one click including Blu-ray and HD DVD discs
- Back up your digital media files and secure them with encryption
- Catalog the contents of your CDs and DVDs
- Create virtual disc drives
- Integrate with Windows Vista media folders
- Transfer digital media from cell phone to PC via Bluetooth or USB
- Send audio mixes to iPod, PSP and other players
- Convert audio and video files
- Disc Label Creation
- DVD case inserts and booklets creation
- Calibrate your printer for label creation

Ulead VideoStudio 11 Plus

Offers video editing and dvd authoring.

VideoStudio Editor has the tools to let even inexperienced users create their own edited home movies. User can follow the step by step software so that they can spend more time working on their actual video editing project rather than on the technical aspects of video editing.

The Movie Wizard is tailored to users that are new to video editing. You can select from the embedded dvd themes, and the program creates a great looking opening sequence for you. The program lets you import photos that automatically create photo slideshows with pan and zoom. It takes about three steps.

The program includes a DV to DVD wizard that makes it very fast to get from your digital video footage to a newly created DVD. You hook up your video camera, choose the scenes from the video that you want, and in two steps you will have a finished DVD with dvd menus, dvd titles, transitions between video clips, and background music.

The software includes the ability to import and edit high definition video.

You can create PIP (picture in picture) effects and can overlay up to six tracks.

The Plus software automatically created opening footage that is comparable to movie opening sequences. It also includes Dobly Digital 5.1 surround sound so when you play your new dvd on a surround sound system, it will sound great.

There are automatic color filters, tone filters, desnowing technology, cleanup of video, mpeg optimizer, and dvd authoring. You can create 16:9 widescreen DVDs, and have the ability to customize the backgrounds and buttons on your dvds. It includes support for MPEG4 files and H.264.

Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum Edition

Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum Edition

Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum Edition allows you to edit video, produce audio, and author dvds. It is a self-inclusive software application that allows you to create quality movies, corporate training video, DVDs from wedding footage, and archive family movies. It allows you to edit video in many of the most popular formats as well as high definition HDV and Sony AVCHD.

There are advanced tools in the package that allow for video compositing and color correction. You can also use the advanced tools to do extensive sound mixing. It has built in DVD authoring and the ability to output files online.

Drag and drop import of video is included. There are built in DVD layout that can be used to burn your project to DVD. They also include interactive training videos that help you get started using the video to dvd transfer software.

Some of the features included:

--creation of high definition files

--export to Sony AVCHD files

--use of surround sound mixing and encoding of video files

--lots of video restoration tools

--includes many professional 2D and 3D video effects for your video movies

--titles and filters

--included transitions

--real time DirectX effects (audio)

--animattes video compositing mattes

Pinnacle Studio Free Training Resources

Some good video training resources for all version of the Pinnacle Studio family of video editing software:

http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/en_US/faq/en411151

Roxio Easy Media Creator 10

Roxio's Easy Media Creator has been updated to support the latest file formats, media types and web services. There are also some extras that will help inexperienced users get going right away.
The new Easy Media Creator 10 runs about $99 bucks, upgrades around $69. Even thought it's geared to the novice, there are many parts of the suite that will satisfy the power user.

Import just about any audio file (MP3, WMA, AAC, Flac, Ogg) and it will encode the song to the format of your choice. For video, it will import and encode VC-1, MPEG, AVI, H.264 and WMV as well as many others. There is an increase in performance over previous versions when working with HD video.
The video editing tools and photo editors are easy to use. There are project wizards for the newbies.
Other features:
Batch CD ripper -- rip MP3s or WMAs from multiple drives
Full support for both HD DVD and Blu-ray formats
Support for HD video up to 1440 X 1080
Audio capture -- record audio from any source
Instantly upload a video to YouTube
Create DVD music discs
Share audio and video among all your computers and devices like the Microsoft Xbox.
Sync with Vista's photo manager.
Crop/resize photos for mobile device screens
Automatically enhance photos taken on your mobile device cameras

Handbrake

Handbrake is a free video software program that allows you to import footage from a DVD and convert the video footage into the MPEG-4 format. It is available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Handbrake will rip your DVD video footage to your computer and then encodes it in the MPEG-4 format so you can then transfer it to an iPod.

The program does not circumvent dvd video copy protection, but if you have your own DVD video that you made of family and friends, it will allow you to rip, encode and transfer this footage to your iPod.

Go to your favorite search engine and search for Handbrake if you wish to download the program.

MiniDVD

A MiniDVD is an 80 mm diameter disc that is used in many of the newer camcorders. When recording at standard DVD quality it will hold about 30 minutes of video footage which takes up 1.4GB of data. If the slow play mode is used the quality is equivalent to a VHS recording and a standard MiniDVD disc will then hold about 120 minutes of video. MiniDVDs can be played back in most consumer DVD players.

In most video editing programs, you can import the video footage from a MiniDVD by going to File:Import DVD.

Studio 11 Ultimate

Pinnacle has come out with the next generation of their popular Studio line of video editing software. I purchased Studio 11 Ultimate which allows me to do the following:

1. Capture from analog and digital sources

2. Assisted movie creation with SmartMovie

3. Video and audio restoration tools

4. Pan & Zoom for animation of still pictures

5. Real-Time effects with preview

6. Works with Windows Vista (even though I'm smart enough not to!)

7. Scaling user interface

8. HiFi music generation

9. Instant transfer from tape to DVD with Instant DVD Recorder

10. Built-in DVD Authoring and Burning

11. One click web upload to Yahoo Video

12. Private web sharing with StudioOnLine.com

13. Export videos to iPod, Sony PSP or DivX

14. HDV and AVCHD native editing

15. HD DVD from standard discs

16. PIP and Chromakey effects

17. Keyframeable effects

18. Dolby 5.1 Encoding

19. Powerful film looks and FX

20. Advanced sound cleaning

21. Precision pan and zoom

22. Green screen

I've had great success with the program so far. It's much more stable than any previous release of Studio since Studio 9.

Another video import option

Many computer users do not have the technical experience (or the equipment) to import their video footage into their computer. This is especially true of older computer or cheaper models, many of which do not have a firewire port.

The Studio MovieBox Plus is a good option. Using a high speed 2.0 USB connection to the computer, the MovieBox allows users to capture video from both analog sources (such as a VCR) or DV sources (such as digital video cameras).

The Studio MovieBox Plus also comes with Pinnacle's Studio software which allows for the editing of the video footage.

Please note: the quality of the video import will be directly related to the speed of your computer and the quality of your video card. If your computer is too slow or the video card too old, you may run into problems with the audio and the video not synching up (your movie will look like a dubbed Japanese horror movie).

How to edit your video footage

Assuming you have already imported your video to your computer, the next step is to assemble the pieces. For most people, especially those editing family video footage, chronological order is the best way to go.

Once you've decided the order, it's time to cut the video footage down to size. Most editing programs will allow you to import the video footage and it will then automatically make scenes out of the footage. This works great most of the time, except if you have filmed a scene with lots of photo flashes or strobe lights (such as dancing at a wedding reception).

Here's the order to make a film watchable for everyone:

1. Cut out the dead/blank spaces.
2. Find long sections and MAKE THEM SHORTER. No one wants to see your little Johnny playing in the playpen for 7 minutes in a row. As a rule, try to cut long and repetitive scenes down to fifteen or twenty seconds.
3. Once you've cut your footage, click on the very last section and you should have an idea how long your film will last.
4. Add your transitions.
5. Add your background music.