# DVD encoder



## Lightnin1 (Apr 23, 2002)

Hello fellow members,

has anyone had any experience with DVD encoders? These are devices that hook up to your computer through either a USB port or Com port so you can hook up your camcorder, vcr, or 501(hee hee) and transfer video to your harddrive in purposes of burning to a DVD disk. I have seen a couple different ones at office depot and places alike for about $200. I wouldn't mind paying that much if they do a good job at ripping.

Thanks in advance


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## Mike123abc (Jul 19, 2002)

Well you will need a DVD recoding drive. I use a pioneer one on my computer. If your camcorder has a fire wire port on it, you can usually just download your camera tapes to the hard drive (if your computer has a firewire port (1394), if not you can buy a firewire card for about $50).

If you do not have a DV camera with firewire output, you can use a device like Dazzle Hollywood DV-Bridge that will take video and audio input and convert it to DV format. (It also comes with a firewire card for your PC).

Once you have it on your hard disk you will need an "authoring" program. This program usually comes with your DVD drive. This program usually lets you do small edits and put together the video that you want to display on your DVD. Then you have it write it out to the DVD when you are done. The pioneer drive that I have came with a program called DVDit.


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## MarkA (Mar 23, 2002)

I haven't heard of a special encoder for DVD? One excellent MPEG2 capture card (as well as video card, TV tuner, 3D card, etc...) is the ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder 7500. Excellent card for $150!


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## Lightnin1 (Apr 23, 2002)

The dazzle hollywood hardware I have heard of. But I Just wanted to know what everyone was using to get the video to the hdd. Forgive me for saying a DVD encoder.

Mike, how do your pioneer drive? What model is it?


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## MarkA (Mar 23, 2002)

I'm VERY happy with the quality of my ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 7500. Excellent does-everything multimedia solution at a relatively inexpensive price. Even has a remote control


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## Mike123abc (Jul 19, 2002)

I have the pioneer A03 drive, it is DVD-RW/-R, I like it a lot, have not had any problems with it. I think the A04 is the current model.

There are -RW/-R and +RW/+R drives out there, despite the marketing spin, they are really about the same, you just need to match the media to the drive. You also need to buy quality name brand media. You can get disks for about a $1 on the web, but the resulting disk will only work with a few drives. The higher quality disks work with a much larger number of DVD players.

The newer the DVD player/settop box the more likely it will work with the recordable drives. The -r/+r media will work in more boxes than the -rw/+rw media will.


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