MiniDV to DVD

[blush]

I'm not that familiar with camcorder film types and the such to begin with (videography in general)... However, my camcorder is a Panasonic which uses MiniDV. I want to "convert" it so that I can burn it onto a DVD. It's really short notice and Googling the topic has just really confused me.

I came across WinDV. Is this one of the "easier" methods? I don't even have a Firewire cable, but I'm willing to get one. :pinch:

I hear quality loss can be lousy (obvious, I suppose), but I hope it won't be too bad.

I do have a VHS to DVD recorder... any way that would come in use in this case?

[blush]

Oh, I also thought about it and I'll probably want to edit the footage too. I know this isn't the software subforum, but would a program like Sony Vegas help me convert the MiniDV to DVD and edit footage?

[aniv]

Synthetic,

I believe this is the first time you are attempting to do something like this. Sony Vegas is the best solution IMHO but it is targeted at professional and experienced users. I would suggest Pinnacle Studio to you but its one helluva resource hog. Try using Ulead Video studio or Adobe Premiere Elements. Both are fairly simple to use. If you have enough free disc space select capture format as uncompressed/raw dv and once you are done editing you can encode it to MPEG2 using mainconcept or tmpeg dvd source creator.

If you need furthere help i can help you over remote assistance once you have either of the apps installed and a firewire cable.

P.S: Use the fastest physical hard drive available as the storage for the capture. ( A Raid Stripe of 2 7.2K rpm drives should be good enough and you wont have any frame drops as long as you have a gig of RAM atleast and a fairly powerful processor.)