Shot 62 minutes of HDV on the HDRFX1.

Want to put it to DVD, with nothing more then a fade in and fade out, but I want to trim 30 seconds or so off the beginning and end.

With that said. I have a pretty powerful PC, I have WMM, Connect HD, CapDVHS, Vegas 6, Nero (newest), etc.

I guess what I am looking for is, whats the best capture method to go almost straight to DVD, but I want a VERY clean DVD. Seems my first tests were hazy looking, not very impressed.

Comments welcome.

Sigh, guess everyone died and went to DV Heaven.

What procedure did you use the first time which you say didn't work very well? Simplest thing should be to simply capture the M2T files, drop them into an HD timeline, make your quick edits, render out to widescreen SD MPEG2 and you're done. Did you try that and it didn't work?

Either that or capture as widescreen DV and just encode to MPEG2-DVD

I should have said that I use Premiere Pro and Cineform Aspect HD and I always get great results.

christian, vegas 6 has the pretty decent mainconcept mpeg2 encoder, set it up for using 2-pass vbr, 8800 max, average 7000(?), quality slider all the way over to best... make darn sure that the mpeg2 output from vegas isn't getting re-encoded during the dvd authoring process.

Roger that guys. THANK you for the responses. I captured an M2T file, then converted it to a raw AVI file, then back to WMV9, made a DVD and well... disaster. The video quality looked very nice, nice indeed. But, the audio was lagging 30 seconds behind the video 51 minutes later.

That wont work, heh. So, ummm, guess the real question is how do I keep the video and audio in sync lol.

Why on earth are you converting to WMV9?

CapVHS will capture a raw M2T file, Vegas will import it and you can edit it without transcoding.

From Vegas, downscale to SD quality, output an MPEG2 file from it using Dan's suggested settings and burn using nero.

Why on earth are you converting to WMV9?

CapVHS will capture a raw M2T file, Vegas will import it and you can edit it without transcoding.

From Vegas, downscale to SD quality, output an MPEG2 file from it using Dan's suggested settings and burn using nero.

Or better still... capture straight to Vegas 6 which has CFHD avi uncompressed built in!

With the video capture on the timeline, drag the top left hand 'flag' to the right to build your fade in, move to the right hand end of the clip... use the mouse scroll wheel to zoom into the clip at about the position you want to make your cut - one mouse click on the clip to bring the current frame marker to roughly where you want; then use the left-right arrow keys to navigate single frame to the exact one you wish to make the cut at - then hit the 's' key when you're set. You now have two clips; the big one you're going to render once you've dragged the top right 'flag' marker to the left to create your fade out... and the left over bit you don't need, and can delete if you don't need it any further.

Now go to "File" then down to "Render As". In the dialogue that opens, select MPEG2 from the file type, and then select an appropriate template for what you hope to render - like DVD Architect WS DV for instance. Go to the properties for that template and adjust them according to the figures outlined in Dann's post above. OK the property changes, and the template type will have changed to "Un-named". To save this new template, go to the floppy disk icon at the top of the "Render As" dialogue, and save the template with a name like "DVD from HDV - Version 1".

Name your output file and render... The saved template will now be available every time you want to render to DVD from HDV, and if you want to adjust further, just name the next template variation "DVD from HDV - Version 2" - you get the drift.

Use the MPEG2 you've rendered to then write your DVD using Nero or any decent DVD Authoring program, load into your standard DVD player and watch!!

BTW: going to WMV9 before the DVD stage is at least quadrupling the compression degradation... not good!!!

The AVeL Linkplayer2 has the ability to play WM9 and you get an hour on a DVD instead of about 20 minutes of M2T. When it first came out, it could not play the M2T - but now it can.

So a long High Definition DVD (DVD-ROM of course) can have 20 minutes of M2T or 60 of high quality WM9. That is one reason to compress.

If, however, you want a regular Standard Definition DVD, I can not see a reason to go with WM9.

The AVeL Linkplayer2 has the ability to play WM9 and you get an hour on a DVD instead of about 20 minutes of M2T. When it first came out, it could not play the M2T - but now it can.


Steven, can the Linkplayer2 also play these M2T files directly from a networked computer? Also, since I can play AVI files using Windows Media Player, can the LP2 play those from a networked computer?

No on the AVI, I don't really know on the M2T over the network. I never tried and my system is packed up and in storage waiting for the movers to take it to the new house. So I can't really check. Sorry. Works great off of a DVD+RW though.

Edit: The firmware notes indicate that an upgrade is required to the LinkServer to play MPEG2-TS, so I assume it works from a server.