PC World's Digital Focus: Make Your Own DVDs; Stills With a Camcorder
Create your own home movies on DVD: software, hardware, tips.Dave Johnson
Feature: Create Your Own Home Movies on DVD
It's not quite up to the quality of The Matrix, but not long ago I made my first movie and put it on DVD. And while I was prepared for the worst, it turns out that the process is relatively simple. If you have a digital video camcorder, a DVD recorder, or a CD-RW drive; a huge slab of unused hard disk space; and some time to kill; you too can become a home-movie producer, churning out your own domestic hits on DVD. Heck, I've made a half-dozen movies now; I have DVDs of scuba diving trips, grade-school pageants, and my cat Hobbes. In this issue, I recommend PC hardware and software to get you started.
Sizing Up DVD Recorders
If you want to make honest-to-goodness DVD movies, you need a drive capable of recording to recordable DVD media. Such a drive lets you copy data onto a 4.7GB disc in a format that most DVD players can read.
The confusing part is that several formats abound. In addition to DVD-R--the format that's most likely to play in the DVD player hooked up to your entertainment center--you can also find DVD-RAM, DVD-RW, and even DVD+RW drives on sale. Check out our review of the latest drives.
Not all of these formats can play in your living room's DVD player. Suffice it to say that DVD-R is your best bet because most of the latest drives (with the notable exception of DVD+RW) can write to DVD-R media. A couple of caveats: Make sure you know what you're buying; and if you have a really old DVD movie player, all bets are off. Fortunately, prices have dropped on recordable DVD drives recently, sometimes dramatically. For example, since the last time PC World looked at recordable DVD products, the Pioneer DVR-A03 DVD-R drive dropped from $799 to under $500. At press time, I found units for about $380 on our Product Finder.
Check out the PC World review of DVD-R drives.
Installing a recordable DVD drive is about as difficult as adding a CD-RW drive or a hard disk. Windows should automatically recognize the device, so there will be no drivers to install. You'll need an available secondary IDE connector, a spare internal power lead, an empty, externally accessible drive bay, and a screwdriver. Your secondary IDE connector is the one your CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive is already hooked up to; you can connect up to two drives per IDE channel. If you already have two devices hooked up to your secondary channel, such as a DVD-ROM drive and a CD-RW drive, you'll either have to remove one or install an add-in IDE adapter card to increase your system's complement of IDE channels.
DVD Video Editing Software
Once you've recorded your movie, you'll need to edit it. If you already make your own videos, you are no doubt familiar with video editing software like Adobe Premiere. But if you want to turn your home movies into DVDs, you'll need to upgrade to a program that supports DVD recording. Your old copy of VideoWave 2 just won't cut it anymore.
Thankfully, many video editing applications are now updated to support DVD production. Here are some products I like that have DVD support built right in:
Are you looking for a good primer on digital video editing and production? Check out "Must-See DV."
Quick and Dirty DVD--Without the DVD
Believe it or not, you don't actually need a DVD-R drive to make movies that will play in standard DVD players. Most current DVD movie players recognize a virtual zoo of formats, including Video CD (also known as VCD). The VCD format is a subset of the CD media family, so you can use your existing CD-RW drive and CD-R discs to create VCDs. The downside? VCDs have a resolution of 352 by 240 pixels and use the less-sophisticated MPEG encoding format. For comparison, DVDs are encoded in MPEG-2, which has a resolution of 720 by 480. The upshot is that you'll see some pixelation and lots of compression artifacts in your video. But you can fit 74 minutes of video onto a VCD, and it'll play in almost any player on earth.
Any video editing program capable of creating DVDs can also make VCDs, so you can start with your CD-RW drive and upgrade later without changing software. So if you want to burn a home movie onto a disc that'll play in the DVD player at grandma's house without buying a $400 DVD-R drive, making VCDs on a CD-RW drive is an affordable alternative.
Dave's Favorites: Multi Flash
VHS, DVD, CD, CompactFlash, Memory Stick, DV, SD, SACD, DVD-Audio, DIMM, RDRAM, floppy, cassette, MiniDisk: There are so many formats floating around that it's hard to keep track of them all. Nowhere is this format proliferation more apparent than among portable devices. I have an MP3 player that uses CompactFlash, a digital camera with a SmartMedia slot, a Palm with SD memory, and a Sony DV camcorder that accepts Memory Stick. That means I'd need four different gadgets on my desktop to transfer data to my PC. Sheesh--that's just ridiculous.
That's why my new best friend is Acom Data, a relatively unknown data storage company that makes the $89 Multi Flash, a multiformat USB memory card reader.
The Multi Flash reader connects to the USB port of your PC and takes up as much space as a small paperback book on your desktop. Nonetheless, it has four card slots, accepting SmartMedia, CompactFlash, Memory Stick, and SD/MMC cards. That's every memory format in common use today, and I should know--I have them all.
When you've got Multi Flash set up, you can open My Computer to find that Windows treats each memory card as an independent removable device. That means you can drag and drop files from your PC to any memory card or from a card to the PC. Even better, you can copy files among the memory cards--I routinely drag images from my digital camera's SmartMedia card to a Memory Stick, for instance, and then pop the Stick into a Sony notebook.
If you work with more than one or two memory formats, I can't recommend the Multi Flash highly enough for putting all your memory card needs in one little desktop adapter. You can buy it at your local computer store or read about it at Acom Data's Web site.
Q&A: Use a Camcorder for Hi-Res Stills
Are there any DV camcorders with good enough still picture quality to replace a regular digital camera?
--Jonathan Landry, Colorado Springs, Colorado
In general, Jonathan, I think that combining a still and video camera into the same housing creates a lot of compromises that get in the way of taking good pictures. But if you're heading off on vacation and don't want to lug two different cameras around the streets of Orlando, then a DV camcorder with still image shooting can be a godsend. Most DV camcorders can grab a still at DV resolution--720 by 480 pixels. That's not enough pixels to print the image, but it may be great for a Web page.
If you want better resolution from your stills, some cameras can accommodate you. Sony's DCR-TRV30 and DCR-PC110 camcorders, for instance, cost less than $2000 and shoot 1.3-megapixel still images. I expect that you'll see more camcorders appear over the next year or so with 1.5- and 2-megapixel resolution, but I doubt that hybrids will ever replace dedicated digital cameras.
Hot Pic of the Week
Get published, get famous! Each week, we select our favorite reader-submitted photo based on creativity, originality, and technique. Every month, the best of the weekly winners gets a prize valued at between $10 and $100.
A gentle reminder, folks: We disqualify some really wonderful pictures every week because the submissions don't follow the rules. Be sure to include everything we ask for in your e-mail message, including a description of your picture and your complete contact information, or your entry is wasted!
Here's how to enter: Send us your photograph in JPEG format at a resolution no higher than 640 by 480 pixels. Entries at higher resolutions will be immediately disqualified. If necessary, use an image editing program to reduce the file size of your image before e-mailing it to us. Include the title of your photo along with a short description and how you photographed it. Don't forget to send your name, e-mail address, and postal address. Before entering please read the full description of the contest rules and regs.
This week's Hot Pic: Ice Dragon, by Mary Amburgey, Loveland, Ohio
Mary says: "I was photographing an ice bridge that had formed along the path of the fountain in my pond when I noticed a particular formation that looked to me like a dragon spitting water. I used no flash, just the underwater light from the bottom of the pond. I set the self-timer to avoid shaking the tripod, which was lying precariously on its side to get the proper angle. I used PhotoImpact to remove some light colored haze from the background and then converted the photo to black and white to remove a few distracting colored reflections from nearby Christmas lights."
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