[TriLUG] VHS Tapes, Digital Video Cameras and DVD Recorders

Michael Thompson thompson at easternrad.com
Thu Jun 10 12:51:37 EDT 2004


Not sure how easy/hard it is to get the data from the vcr to the
computer, but I do know that the dvdauthor software I found to try and
arrange my mpegs on the dvd with menus, etc, was *not* easy.  Basically,
you have to create an XML file with all the menus and movie files laid
out how you want them, then it creates a DVD iso.  After a few hours of
playing with it, still had no success.  Apparently, its not as easy as
"just putting the files in a VIDEO_TS directory and burning".

A google search on "dvdauthor" will probably bring up some information,
but if you're looking for something "point and click" (brings us back to
usability issues again?) then you're probably better of using one of the
<sigh> "other" OSes...

BTW, I was hoping that my new PowerBook (which came with iDVD) would
allow me to author my DVDs into ISO files which I could burn on my linux
PC, but apparently it requires a hack that is *not* allowed under the
DMCA as my PowerBook did not come with the DVD burner built in.  So, if
you buy a Mac hoping to put your home videos on DVD, pay the extra $200
for the DVD burner.

--mike

On Thu, 2004-06-10 at 08:27, Jeff Tickle wrote:
> Howdy..
> 
> My Dad wants to start a fun little conversion project.  He has a bunch
> of VHS tapes that he'd like to convert to DVDs, plus some stuff he's
> recorded on a digital video camera (not sure of the model... so we'll
> just assume it works with Linux until I find out otherwise.)
> 
> Does anyone have experience doing this with Linux?  One thing I'm going
> to have to do is make the entire process as easy as possible.  I haven't
> done much research yet but I just wanted to get word from any of your
> experiences.  The two things I have absolutely no clue how to do are
> take the video from the camera and write video to a DVD.
> 
> -Jeff
> 
> -- 
> Jeff Tickle <jtickle at jtsoft.net>
> JTSoft.net





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