Camcorder to DVD burning software ?

[Skii]

A work colleague is wanting to burn video from his analogue camcorder to DVD format

Can anyone recommend the approprate software, is there any freebie software to do this?

Cheers peeps

[Taz]

You'll still need to get the signal into your computer via some sort of interface (eg. USB) - known as a capture device as far as Windows is concerned. Hence, you will need a bit of hardware. Your colleagues' analogue camcorder is only likely to have composite or S-Video output. This will need to be converted to a file format that your PC can work with (eg. .avi, mpeg). Take a look at the Pinnacle site for hardware/software bundles to do this.

You can get a USB A-D convertor that will be recognised as a capture device for a few pounds. You can then use MovieMaker built into Windows XP for free but this will not allow you to write to a DVD. You'll need to spend some money to buy software to so this. There may be free software to do this but I do not know of any.

It's best to go with the tried and trusted movie and DVD-authoring packages from Pinnacle and Ulead, IMO.

[Ferral]

Skii mate, just get the camcorder hooked up to the PC and pull it onto the pc hard disk using Windows movie maker.

After that use Nerovision Express 2 or higher to convert the file into DVD format and burn it.

I tried loads of different software when I was trying to put daughters nativity onto hard disk then burn and all of them it ended up completely crap, skipping frames, out of sync etc

When I called Sony about the camcorder and software they actually recommended I used Windows Movie Maker to do it.

Keep it simple and use what is already there mate.

[Skii]

Thanks Ferral and Taz - very useful guys.