Advice on editing video before burning to DVD

14 years ago

This is my first post to the computer forum although I've been a member of Gardenweb for several years.

I have a new Windows 7 64 bit PC with 640 gigs of memory and 4 of RAM. I was actually happy when my XP model (circa '01) died in November because I wanted a new more powerful machine to do some VHS to DVD editing & burning. I've been working on it since Christmas and have had some setbacks but it looks like I've overcome them. Here's what I ran up against, hoping you can avoid the pitfalls.

I had to find a capture device that was Windows 7 compatible, and that took some time. I had a Dazzle, but it would not work on W7. Finally I found VHS to DVD 4.0 Deluxe from Honestech, which fit the bill.

Installation went just fine, and capturing the video went smoothly. After every hour and nine minutes it would complete one file on the PC and begin another on the fly, so I ended up with two files for 2 hours of video. Since my intention was to get the video from several tapes and put them into chronological order I ended up with quite a few files, some smaller than others.

I tried editing out the unwanted bits using the Honestech software but found it cumbersome and hard to understand. There's an instruction booklet but it's vague, and the manual is a 69 page download. I am familiar with the XP version of Windows Movie Maker so I installed Windows Live Movie Maker for Windows 7. That worked great and soon enough I had everything in order. I saved my work as a WMV movie (the only option) but when I burned my first DVD it wouldn't play in my DVD player, although it worked fine on my PC. The Honestech software burns the files as MPEG's, so I started from scratch using that. However I ran into another snag - My PC started running slower and slower. Even with the vast amount of memory at my disposal, I was using up all of my PC's resources. Finally I found the answer: upload the video with Honestech, edit it with WLMM, save it as WMV files, and then use the Honestech software to convert WMV to MPEG and burn to DVD at the same time. Success!!!! You can even add chapter points so you aren't fast-forwarding all over the place.

There is also an option where it uploads from VHS and burns the DVD right away 'warts and all' but I had a lot of warts I was able to get rid of.

I hope this helps somebody out there.

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