[Tom Lapointe]

I've had a lot of fun over the past couple of years shooting videos of my railroad & putting them up on "YouTube"; in fact, I've had sufficient interest that I'd like to make them available on DVD. My computer came with a DVD burner but originally NOT the software necessary to burn DVD's (I was able to burn music CD's withour any problems). - What the computer came with was a "trial" version of the software which was DVD READ-only (the software vendor wanted a $70 upgrade /DesktopModules/NTForums/themes/mls/emoticons/angry.gif to burn DVD's).
A while back they had a "sale" & reduced the upgrade price to $25- which I considered somewhat more acceptable & went for.
Problem is, I STILL CAN'T burn my Window's Movie Maker files (saved in the native DV-AVI format of the camcorder) to DVD /DesktopModules/NTForums/themes/mls/emoticons/crazy.gif - what the burner wants to see are files in something called a ".VOB" format.
Wondering if anyone has a suggested work-around for this? The computer uses an Athlon 64-bit (dual core) CPU, & came with Windows XP Pro (64-bit edtion) pre-installed. I just checked Microsoft's website, notice they offer a Windows DVD maker for VISTA, which I am NOT about to upgrade to, after all the "horror" /DesktopModules/NTForums/themes/mls/emoticons/ermm.gif stories I've heard from others. The other factor driving this is I have a family wedding to videotape this coming weekend, & they may want the finshed video in DVD (I'm not even sure if they own a VHS /DesktopModules/NTForums/themes/mls/emoticons/sick.gif deck - which I could dub to easily!). /DesktopModules/NTForums/themes/mls/emoticons/blush.gif

Tom

 

[Trains]

Tom,

That's why the PC's they say are so cheap now. All the programs they use to come with your PC, you have to buy now. So buy the time you add up the price of your computer add all the programs you need to buy, you pay more.

 

[craigcoffman]

VOB files are neccessary for a true DVD-format DVD.. i.e., one that will play in most stand-alone DVD players hooked to a TV. Other burning software (can't make a recomendation here as I'm a linux guy) will burn those AVI files to a DVD disc, making a "data" style DVD., i.e., one that reads like a data cdrom in a computer. People would then be able to play the AVI files from disc, using their computers. SOME newer DVD players will, in fact, read & play data-style AVI files from a data DVD, even ones encoded with the latest popular encoders (DIVX, XVID). Though it's unlikely that most people will have those players yet.

The answer is probably look around an find a converter that will re-encode your AVI files to VOB format so that you can author a true video DVD.

 

[Dwight Ennis]

If you're going to buy DVD burning software, make sure whatever you get does "packet writing." This allows you to put a blank DVD in the drive and it looks just like an additional disk drive, so you can drag and drop stuff on it from Windows Explorer, etc., just as if it were another disk. The DVD will be finalized when you eject it (if you choose), making it readable on any other computers DVD.

Packet writing is a real advantage when you want to archive stuff - no need to run special software - just use Explorer.

 

[Tom Lapointe]

Thanks for the info; I'm more interested in having the DVD's playable on a standard DVD player into a TV set, rather than computer-only use. (Most computer DVD drives should be able to read the .VOB format). Anyone know of any specific software (compatible with XP Pro 64-bit) for this?

Tom

 

[Dwight Ennis]

Roxio's Easy Media Creator 10 is a very complete package with just about every feature you could possible want. It says it will burn DVDs for TV/VCR output. A quick email to the company should confirm if it will do what you want it to do.

Not cheap, but very complete.

 

[East Broad Top]

I use Roxio at work, and it seems to work fairly well. One little catch--it demands you save the file before you burn the DVD (no problem) but then will not open the saved file if you want to go back and burn more DVDs. Not a huge problem as I generally burn all that I need at that point anyway, but it's still an oddity. Toast is another common DVD-authoring software.

I use iDVD on my Macs at home, but that doesn't help your situation any.

Later,

K

 

[Tom Lapointe]

Thanks for the info, Dwight & Kevin! I'm going to e-mail Roxio with a few questions I have before ordering it.
Need to get the DVD burn capability FAST - starting to run low on hard drive space!/DesktopModules/NTForums/themes/mls/emoticons/crazy.gif (Down to 82.5 GB left on a 300 GB system./DesktopModules/NTForums/themes/mls/emoticons/ermm.gif ). Dumping just one full hour tape of DV-AVI video ate up @ 12.5 GB. alone! (& I shot a total of 2 hrs. 15 min. to cover that entire wedding!/DesktopModules/NTForums/themes/mls/emoticons/wow.gif - although should drop some of that in the edit process). I have 2 DVD drives in the PC - a read-only plus the read-write drive - so once I have a "master" copy edited, I can hopefully just pop it in the read drive & duplicate it to the write one./DesktopModules/NTForums/themes/mls/emoticons/blush.gif

Tom

 

[artgibson]

Tom
You might want to take a look a Muvee Producer 6. I free trial is available for download.
I have it, I have Roxio 9 and Pinnacle. I have found that the Muvee producer is very easy to use and is not as stubborn as Roxio is from tome to time. I know you can do a lot more things with Roxio than with Muvee , but you might try the trial version. It may give you enough to do your project.

 

[artgibson]

By the way the trial version is good for 21 days and there are a oot of differeny ways you can present your wedding videos. Just athought.

 

[Tom Lapointe]

Thanks for the info on the trial version of Muvee, gibs! (The price is certainly right!/DesktopModules/NTForums/themes/mls/emoticons/w00t.gif ).
I also haven't heard back from Roxio in response to some of my e-mail questions /DesktopModules/NTForums/themes/mls/emoticons/ermm.gif so it may be a case of "they snooze, they lose!"/DesktopModules/NTForums/themes/mls/emoticons/laugh.gif Tom

 

[artgibson]

Tom
Another thing about Muvee Producer is the different versions of how you can produce your movie. You can let Producer make your movie for you, which I find is amistake because it will edit out good stuff, but by the same token they have versions in the software that are"KEEP IT ALL" styles.
Also you can do slo- mo black and white ETC . I just put under LIVE STEAM thread a redo of one of my videos in "Sepia".
Good luck with your project.
Art

 

[Kovacjr]

Anyone know where to find the link to re-download Moviemaker from Microsoft? I can only find the Vista version and I had to replace a hard drive and lost the program months ago.

 

[Dwight Ennis]

As far as I know, it should install when you install XP.

 

[Kovacjr]

Im on XP Pro and it is not installed the previous HD was also on XP Pro and neither had it..I downloaded it from Microsoft website but now the only version I can find is for Vista..

 

[pimanjc]

Tom,
I use Adobe Premiere Elements. It is an easy to use program for capturing and editing video for use in AVI, MPG or DVD formated exports. You can take an existing video avi file and in 10min, have it ready to burn to a DVD [if the file is already edited] It has a title program, and many special effects built in. Cost is less than $100.
JimC.

 

[Semper Vaporo]

Posted By Kovacjr on 06/16/2008 3:29 PM
Im on XP Pro and it is not installed the previous HD was also on XP Pro and neither had it..I downloaded it from Microsoft website but now the only version I can find is for Vista..




Try typeing "Windows Movie Maker Archive" into the Google search line. There are several places listed that may have it available.

 

[Dwight Ennis]

Mine is installed as "C:\Program Files\Movie Maker\moviemk.exe" - you might take a look and see if you have the program. Maybe you're only missing the shortcut.

 

[Tom Lapointe]

An update - I did download the trial version of "Muvee". Able to transfer files to it, but it seems to hang whenever I try to burn a DVD from it./DesktopModules/NTForums/themes/mls/emoticons/angry.gif Glad it was a TRIAL version!/DesktopModules/NTForums/themes/mls/emoticons/blush.gif (I sure won't be buying the "full version" of it!/DesktopModules/NTForums/themes/mls/emoticons/crazy.gif ). Also, never received any reply from Roxio on my e-mail compatibility questions. (I noticed they don't seem to have a customer service phone number listed either - which makes wonder if they have ANY "real-life" support at all/DesktopModules/NTForums/themes/mls/emoticons/sick.gif ). Back to the "drawing board".../DesktopModules/NTForums/themes/mls/emoticons/ermm.gif Tom

 

[artgibson]

Sorry you had trouble with the Muvee program. Ive used it and others for about three years and seem to be able to overcome the problems that all of the video programs seem to present in that they really test the
power of the pc.