Workshop: A Digital Facelift for Your Analog Movies

Burning Videos To DVD

The software Tmpgenc does a great job of converting finished DV videos into the DVD-compliant MPEG-2 format (www.tmpgenc.net ). Virtual Dub saves film data in a file with an *.AVI extension as a kind of container format where it accommodates the DV stream. To do this, though, you need to have first installed the DV codec (see installation description). Once Tmpgenc has loaded the AVI file, it automatically recognizes the underlying format. Provided the codecs have been installed, Tmpgenc will convert not only AVI and DV, but also ASF, DivX, MPEG, MOV, WMV and Xvid. The software offers pre-set target formats (templates) for DVD, VCD and SVCD. By default, the software calls up a convenient wizard that takes you through all the settings, although you can adjust all the settings manually using the Button Setting. Now specifying the video and audio data is the only thing left before starting the conversion at the click of the start button. Go to Video source to select the video file you intend to convert. If it's in DV, Huffyuv or Motion-JPEG format, the video and soundtracks are linked together in one stream, so you won't have to specify the sound source.

Authoring Software A Must

You'll need authoring software to create a DVD. It converts the MPEG file to the VOB format and then creates the IFO and BUP files you need for playback. Vendors of DVD burners frequently include authoring programs with their products. Pinnacle Movie Studio 8, for example, ships with the 4x burner Teac DV-W50E, while Sony prefers Sonic My DVD for its multiformat recorder DRU 500 A.

Standard burning programs such as Nero Burning ROM or Easy CD Creator, on the other hand, cannot create a video DVD from an MPEG-2 file generated by Tmpgenc. If you're not too finicky about the video quality, you can generate VCD or SVCD files in Tmpgenc. Nero Burning ROM, Easy CD Creator and other modern burning programs have no difficulties burning those formats. And if you're archiving Super-8 footage, the video quality of the VCD or SVCD format is more than sufficient.