Make DVD Movies From Your Camcorder’s Video (Burnworld Guest Post)

As the price of HD camcorders continue to drop, more people are finding that making their own DVD movies is now a viable option. The quality of movie is superb, and all you need is a fairly in-expensive HD camcorder (like a Flip or a Vado), a home PC with a DVD Burner and some editing software.

Choosing a camcorder

When selecting a HD camcorder make sure it is advertised as Full HD so you can benefit from the full 720p or 1080p resolution. There are a few different types, some with an on-board hard-drive, some will record direct to a memory card, and some will even record directly to a DVD. They all have pros and cons, but considering how cheap SD memory cards are this is probably one of the best all round options.

The PC

To carry out the movie editing and processing, you will need a fairly good PC. The processing of HD video is very intensive so you will get best results with a multi-core processor and lots of RAM, we’d recommend 3 or 4GB as a minimum. You will also need lots of hard-drive space for editing the files and temporary storage prior to the burning to DVD stage.

Movie Editing and Authoring Software

There are many DVD software packages that will allow editing the movies down to a highlight reel, and also take care of the burning process which copies your final movie to DVD. One such package is Sothink HD Converter. Sothink HD Converter will edit your movies and create the final DVD disc that is playable on any standard DVD player. It can also convert between many different video formats, and between HD and SD.

Another package for creating your DVD movies is ConvertXtoDVD. ConvertXtoDVD has many editing options to help create your home movie such as menus and chapters, and will output to various resolutions and formats. You can view more DVD Burning Software at http://www.burnworld.com

All video editing packages follow basically the same procedure for making your home movie, as follows.

Adding Files
When you connect your camcorder to your PC the manufacturers software will automatically begin and copy your raw movie files to your computer. When you launch your video editing software you will add these files via the File menu.

Edit Video
With your raw video files now open in the file editor you can begin the fun process of editing the video by trimming out the sections you do not want, and adding special effects and titles to the sections you want to keep. Once you are finished, play the video and check you are happy with the results prior to the next stage.

Burning the Disc
Now that you have finished adding files and editing video, it’s time to set the recording settings.There will be an option to select the DVD size: select DVD, this might be listed as something like “DVD 5” or “DVD 9” depending on your software and blank disc size.
There will also be a setting for the Video frame rate: in the UK and Europe “25 (PAL)” is the standard, for the USA select “29.97 (NTSC)”.

There may be more settings under an Advanced Tab, but these are the main settings to get you started.Now you are ready to select “Burn” and beginning making your DVD movie. The burn process only takes a few minutes with today’s burners. We would recommend that when starting out you try a fairly short movie first and time how long it takes. This will give you a good idea of how long it will take to burn a full DVD.

Once the burning is finished, you will have a standard DVD containing your video footage that you can give away to family or to enjoy on those family movie nights!