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A little help? Copying VHS to DVD

leftbanke7

leftbanke7

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Feb 4, 2004
746
1
West Valley City, Utah
I am trying to put one of my VHS tapes onto a DVD and I am running into some problems. Here is how it has rundown so far:

I first copied the VHS movie to my miniDV camera (used 3 tapes to do it), then imported the video into FCE. I edited the video together (as it was split up due to using 3 tapes to get it all) and exported it as a Quicktime Movie leaving me with a file a little over 25 GB. iDVD couldn't compress it down enough to burn onto a 4.7 GB DVD and so I tried to use a file conversion using Quicktime Pro to change it into a MPEG2 file. This is where I am stuck, I now have 3 files on my desktop, a .m2v file, an .aif file and a folder labeled "PAR" and the contents of it, which are labeled .m2v.par, looks like a project file of DVD Studio Pro (a program in which I can not figure out how to use). Any ideas on what I can do (outside of taking a crash course on DVD Studio Pro)? I'd rather not buy any other programs because I really can't afford them.
 
A

abrooks

macrumors 6502a
Sep 18, 2004
640
191
London, UK
Never used Final Cut Express in my life but I know all Apple Video apps have an easy way to burn to a DVD, iMovie is a click of a button and the same with FCP and I can't see why you should have to export it all to do a simple task.
 
B

B. McKechnie

macrumors member
Aug 11, 2004
33
0
Toronto, Ontatio, Canada
I would suggest exporting the MPEG2 from FCE. This way you can adjust the bitrate and have more control over your file.

The easiest way to do this in FCP is:

File > Export > Using Quicktime Conversion

Select MPEG2 for Format and select Options.

In the Options window you will see how large your file will be (if it is blank it is because you have not rendered your movie). Select Video and play with the bitrate settings until you are around 4GB.

This example is from FCP but I believe it should be the same in FCE.

I would also recommend using DVD Studio Pro if you have it. If you are just making a straight DVD without any menus, etc. it is very simple to do. Let me know what version you have and I can post basic instructions for you.

Hope this helps.
 
K

Keebler

macrumors 68030
Jun 20, 2005
2,960
207
Canada
you're almost there.

how big is that m2v file? i'm assuming it's pretty big if you needed 3 minidv tapes. typically, you should only fit about 1.5 hours on a regular DVD. Dual layer should be about 3. This is keeping with high quality mpeg2s, which i recommend. no sense decreasing the quality of your family memories.

your aif is your sound file. i don't use idvd so i don't know if it needs an ac3 file or an aif. the ac3 file is a compressed version of the aif which is important b/c it is less bitrate the dvd player will need to process.

the 'par' folder is just a parsing folder. just don't delete it until your project is done.

do you have DVD studio pro? it's actually not that hard to use. just follow the tutorials and i bet you'll have a working dvd very quickly.

cheers,
keebler
 
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