Capture video from camera to disk.  Your capture program should put raw, full quality DV video and audio on disk, usually stored as an *.avi file.  It is not desirable to store your capture in MPEG (as some programs try to do) because it lowers quality.  Time: same as source amount of video.  1 hour of video is a 1 hour capture (It would be cool if it could capture 2X or higher, but many can't even do 1X reliably)

Edit: Split into chapters, trim footage.  Time: Depends on how fancy you get, say 5 mins - 30 mins.

Encode from captured format to DVD-legal MPEG-2.  If video exceeds 60 mins, then you can use variable bit rate (VBR) to typically achieve high quality DVD.  If 60 mins or less, then constant bitrate encoding (CBR) is fine because you don't need to conserve DVD space and CBR can be done in half the 2-pass VBR time.  Time to process: 2 to 10 hours.  If you use one of the direct-to-dvd programs, then it will start encoding in the background while you are capturing, so you are ahead of the game timewise.

A word about video:  One-Pass VBR results in strobing effects during video motion, as does any Constant Bitrate Encoding (CBR) less than 6000-7000 Kbps.  It is my observation that 2 hours of video encoded with 2-Pass VBR (1000 Kbps minimum, 4200 avg, 8000 max) from a high-quality encoder results in the same quality as 8000 Kbps CBR for your typical home video needs. The tradeoff is encoding time versus buying less disks.

A word about audio:  PCM format is most compatible, but I have found that the players capable of playing DVD-Rs are usually capable of handling MPEG encoded audio.  MPEG encoded audio is more than 4 times smaller.  So, try this first because it makes more room for video.  The money you save on blank DVDs will pay for a new DVD player.

Create menus.  Time: 5 mins - 30 mins.

Create DVD files (video_ts subdirectory with .ifo and other files).  Time: 15 mins to 1 hour

Burn DVD:  Time:  1X = 1 hr, 2X=30mins, 4X=15 mins; add time if you are multitasking on the machine.

Sound must be in sync with audio for long captures and during final result. Seems obvious, but this has been the source of many problems for me and for countless others with all of the programs on the market.  This applies to digital and analog sources.

Encoder must produce high quality video and must have support for 2-Pass Variable bitrate encoding (VBR).  This allows you to encode 2 hours of video with relatively high quality and no strobe effects during video motion.  I was thinking that these vendors have been afraid to cannabilize their higher end products by moving advanced features into the lower end products, but it is equally likely that they have to keep the products simple so that the average (or maybe even the less experienced) users will keep themselves out of trouble.

Program should be robust: should not crash, should not disappear, should have detailed debugging information.  Failures must not corrupt project file (Pinnacle Studio has corrupted several of my more "invested" projects)

Support 16:9 (It appears that MiniDV cameras just throw away bits to do 16:9, which is not desirable to me.)

	Set appropriate bits so that 4:3 TVs will use anamorphic presentation.  See also
	Support 16:9 menus and transitions

Capture must support AV-DV passthrough.  This means using my firewire-attached Sony DCR-TRV25 in AV->DV mode without a MiniDV tape in it would capture live video to support 8mm film capture and analog input to video capture.  MiniDV holds 60 minutes full quality of tape and my old 8mm tapes hold 2hrs of analog data.  This is not just a "camera supporting passthrough" issue. Certainly the camera must support it, but the real issue is that when a camera supports programmatic control via firewire, many programs will *only* capture when they take control. Thus, for a program to support "passthrough" in my book, it must allow capture of "live" input as opposed to forcing "play" of the tape in the device. Some programs will allow you to tape live input if you remove the tape and others will complain that you removed the tape.  Here is one person's tip (USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!) on modifying a registry entry to enable passthrough on some programs by "dumbing down" the driver. 

Some of the challenges that Pinnacle and others have with regards to audio synchronization issues are caused, in part, by framing sequence and audio dropout issues from the source analog devices.  Apparently these issues are the same whether you are using a analog video (AV) capture card or a video camera which supports AV capture.  Sources which are continuous (one long recording session and not a bunch of overlapping or gapped sessions) are less likely to experience problems.

Capture program must be able to capture 2 hours of full DV format in one single file (25 GB) with audio in sync.

Capture program must support timed Capture.  Ie - stop after 2 hours of capture.

Menus should support animated backgrounds, animated thumbnails, and must not be grainy

Chapters should be easy to place within AVIs or mpegs.  

Menu button still image or beginning of  animation must be selectable within the clip.

Should include slideshow capability

	Support at least 10 DVD chapters and an unlimited number of stills within a chapter.
	DVD Section points should be evenly distributed within the chapter (1 per image when under 99 and evenly distributed when more than 99 images).
	DVD Variable bitrate encoding should be used to maximize number of stills placed.
	When used in a PC A viewer should be packaged on the DVD.  Preferably one that require no installation. The viewer should be autolaunched and start a slideshow on the PC.
	Originals should be packaged in a nice, hierarchical subdirectory layout on the DVD.

HP 753N, which came with...

	Pentium 4, 2.53GHz
	80GB HDD, ultradma with DMA enabled; all HDDs both have very good xfer rates 40-55Mbps
	3 1394 firewire ports
	6 USB2.0 ports

120GB Maxtor 7200 RPM ultradma HDD (with dma enabled)

80GB firewire drive

Sony firewire DVD writer DRX500UL

I have used this successfully for twenty over-one-hour DVD projects as of February 2nd, 2003.  I made about five copies of each project (home movies to share with family).  I have also taken about ten 2-3 hour movies off of Dish Network and used this process to create a single DVD with apparently the same quality as the source (not as good as a real, 2 layer movie DVD, but as good as the Dish Network version).

Capture with Dazzle's DVD Complete (supports passthrough and timed capture).  Abort mpeg encode and find the temp avi file placed in the "\Dazzle Content\Temp" directory and rename or move it somewhere else on that disk (so it will do a fast move).

Encode with TMPGEnc using these tips

video with TMPGENC (2 pass VBR, 4200 Kbps avg, 1000 Kbps min, 8000 Kbps max) Use the wizard to get the best quality. Set the audio to mpeg less than 128 kbps, set 2 pass VBR, and then tell it to consume 99% of a DVD disk.  This seems to be the shortcut. Generate Elementary Streams (audio and video in separate files) I have found that TMPGenc is more reliable if multitasking is off. If less than 2 hours, optionally calculate your average VBR based on source time using the Bitrate Calculator.  For 2 hours of source video, use about 3600kbps for your average bit rate if using PCM audio or about 4200 for 384kbps Layer II MPEG audio.   Note that 2-pass VBR takes a very long time.  Two hours of source on my 2.53 GHz machine reading from one hard drive, writing to another, and using a third for temp area, with no filters, it takes over 8 hours to encode.  Add sharpening or other filters will make it longer. My 16:9 experiment My Pioneer DVD player has a button to display the bitrate as the video is playing.  It is interesting to watch the scene changes max out the bitrate while the rest of the time it stays around the average.  It doesn't seem to get near the minimum, even when there is little motion.  I am not sure if that is a bug in the dvd player's display algorithm or some feature of TMPGEnc.

audio with tooLame as TMPGENC plugin.  Note that this is not as portable as PCM audio, so try it out in your player.  I tried having TMPGENC output PCM audio and having DVD Complete encode it into MPEG, but ended up with out-of-sync audio.  Use around 100K bps for mpeg audio.  You don't need much more than that.

Use DVD Complete to import the resulting elementary streams, create chapter points, and create DVD File.

Use another program to burn so that you can multitask. Move the resulting AUDIO_TS (empty, but required by some DVD players) and VIDEO_TS to another directory.

TIPS for getting the most done fast (extreme multitasking)

	If you have a really fast machine (test before you invest time and find out you are dropping frames during capture or creating DVD "coasters" - try rewritable DVDs during test).  If your machine is not up to snuff, then skip these tips.
	Run TMPGEnc with low priority.  WinXP does a good job of letting it consume the CPU's idle time.  To run it too high will result in dropped frames or bad DVD burns.
	Fully exploit TMPGEnc's batch capabilities.  I often have 12-24 hours of work queued up for it.  To add a newly-captured job while TMPGEnc is already running, open a second TMPGEnc program instance and create the project as desired.  Go back to the batch that is currently running on the first instance (don't select batch or try to "add to batch" from the second instance or you might crash the first instance) and Click "Add".  Then select the new project file you created and it will get to it in due time.
	I have found that I can capture, burn DVDs, and run TMPGEnc all at the same time.  However, after a while something seems to get hosed and I have to reboot (likely this was due to my dvd burner using usb and I have not experienced it when the dvd burner is using firewire).  But, the reboot is cheap compared to the time I am saving.
	Buy a DVD-R drive and media capable of writing 4X, so you can burn 4 discs per hour.  Buy a few 1X's if they are cheaper for when you burn before bed or leaving.
	I often mpeg encode several different captures before continuing to see which ones I can fit together to make the most use of a DVD.

No need to use variable bitrate encoding (VBR) with less than an hour, because the maximum bitrate can be used. 

Use  Sonic's MyDVD or Dazzle's DVD Complete, especially to do direct-to-dvd burns, though quality may suffer.

Or Use Pinnacle Studio if you can get it to work.  Don't buy unless you can return & return it promptly if you have problems.   

Encoding takes in the 3 hour range on my machine.

With over 20 gigabytes of digital pictures and low-quality digicam mpegs, I would really like to archive these onto DVD as described in the requirements section above.

ULead Pictureshow appears to be the best choice here, but it does not appear to use variable bitrate encoding, thus the DVD representation of the image collection is the same size as the 3 megapixel original size of the image collection.  I need to do some more research here.  PS creates true dvd video files and has a very nice multi-directory import capability.  It also has a built-in PC player (for when you distribute it to others), though I haven't tried it yet.  Their manuals are available online and appear to be of high quality.

Using Microsoft Movie Maker to create an AVI from the stills and then using TMPGENC to 2-pass VBR encode, I ended up with a much smaller DVD representation and similar quality as ULead PS.  Microsoft Movie Maker has some nice effects, though it did crash occasionally when working with mpeg files from my Sony DSC-S75 (digital still camera).  Of course, this takes much more of my time to compose than it would in PS.

Dazzle's OnDVD is kind of a misnomer because it creates CD VCDs which can be played in many DVD players.  I could not find information on whether the resolution (image quality) is the same or info on whether it could create this same SVD on DVD media and fully utilize the DVD media.  Any input here would be appreciated.

Dazzle's DVD Complete (capture, edit, encode, menus, createDvdFiles, burn)

	This was my choice for video capture, though I always aborted the capture after renaming raw captured AVI file.
	One of the best features of this product is that it will leave audio and video files alone which are already properly encoded for DVD (it will not re-encode using its own mpeg engine).  Audio and video should be processed into separate output files.
	If you get jaggies on your menu thumbnails, change the thumbnail to some interior video point.
	Things the vendor should address to be viable or competitive MPEG 2 encoding should not happen after every capture.  I want it to store raw AVI and let me do the MPEG encoding later (externally or internally).  Support 2-pass VBR. Better interface for separating a single movie file into scenes.  Studio does it better. The menus are ugly and grainy.  I don't want to "upgrade" to get more menus because I might end up with no good menus but just more crappy ones. Need to show number of dropped frames during capture!!! Add slideshow support to bundled versions Make slideshow function equivalent to Ulead's Pictureshow and add in 2-Pass VBR to allow hours of slideshow.

Pinnacle Studio 8 (capture, edit, encode, menus, createDvdFiles, burn)

	Would be the king of the world if it was not the least reliable program in the history of mankind.
	I own a copy, but cannot use it due to multiple problems which I have spent easily over a hundred hours trying to resolve using forums, etc.
	The splitting of captured AVIs into scenes is better, faster, easier than other programs (if capture worked on fast XP machines)
	Only imports type 2 DV AVI files.  Since captures were off, I tried other programs to capture and only Expression and Scenalyzer would capture to a supported codec. Now that someone pointed out the type 2 distinction, I might be able to coax MS WMM to capture to the right encoding.
	Things the vendor should address to be viable or competitive First, a question for Pinnacle - why does Studio have such a crappy capture engine when the Expression engine does fine (except that Expression does not support passthrough)????? Capture drops frames when other capture programs on same machine do not drop frames MUST FIX: Program often traps or just disappears MUST FIX: Captured audio VERY out of sync with video AND will not use AVI files captured with other programs <sigh> MUST FIX: Program disappears when you have insufficient space on the destination, source, or temp drive

Pixela (capture, edit, encode)

	Came with Sony MiniDV camera
	Things the vendor should address to be viable or competitive Will not do passthrough (even though camera it came with does)!!!! Will only capture 4GB (20 mins) at a time and capture must be restarted for next 20 mins Poor user interface

ULead DVD Movie Factory ( capture, edit, encode, menus, createDvdFiles, burn)

	Would not capture for me.  Error - "Failed to build preview graph"
	Looks like passthrough would be supported if I could get capture to work.

Microsoft Movie Maker (MSMM) (capture, edit)

	Only useful for capturing and editing video
	Creates cool rolling credits, etc.
	Does not do passthrough.  Error:  "There is no tape in your DV device.  Please insert a tape ..."
	TMPGENC didn't do well with the audio captured with MSMM.  I could have played around with codec, but gave up.
	Won't make DVDs or DVD menus (if it does someday, then expect this market to collapse).

 MyDVD (capture, encode, menus [split files only], createDvdFiles, burn)

	Will take TMPGENC output mpegs and not try to re-MPEG them, but will always re-encode to PCM audio.
	Will not permit you to specify chapters or sections in a input file.  You have to split these up in advance.
	Requires main menu.  Bummer because it looks kind of lame when you only have 1 2-hour video clip menu item.
	Things the vendor should address to be viable or competitive Support chapter selection within a source file (like DVD Complete allows) Support mpeg-encoded audio (for import and as built-in encoding option) I have done some direct-to-dvd where the sound ends up out of sync.  I did not notice this when avis where used as input source. Make slideshow function equivalent to Ulead's Pictureshow (unlimited images per chapter) and add in 2-Pass VBR to allow hours of slideshow.

ScenalyzerLive

	For $33 a very useful purchase
	They need to fix the stop capture timers as they do not work and it is very annoying to not be able to kick off a 2 hour capture before going to bed
	Captures in a variety of formats, including input into studio with scenes.  I recommend Type2 DV-avi file for TMPGENC input.
	Pinnacle should give you this application for free with Studio, since it actually works

Moviestar (??capture, edit, encode, menus, createDvdFiles, burn)

Used it, but don't remember any details.  Seems like there were some problems.

ShowBiz (capture, edit, encode)

Used it, but don't remember any details.  Seems like there were some problems.

RecordNow (burn)

	Usually does well.  Came with Sony DVD burner (had to download free DX upgrade using DLA link from installation program, the one that came with it did not work correctly).
	I have to reboot after a bad disk is created because it seems to continue to produce coasters after failure.