Here's my situation & maybe someone has some experience with this?

I have the ATI All-In-Wonder 8500 128mb card. I got it for Xmas to transfer my 8mm camcorder tapes (family movies) to CD as well as to play games. I only have a CD burner, though, not DVD.

The camcorder uses composite video out (I know-sucks). I hooked it up but don't really know just how to import it to get the best quality picture while keeping it small enough to get a decent amount on a CD-R (700mb). My first trial of a few minutes of tape, once on the hard drive, was very large. It was also not the best looking I'd seen- but is that the compsite connection's fault?

The card came bundled with: PowerDVD, Ulead VideoStudio 6, & MatchWare Mediator 6. I have absolutely no experience with any of this at all.

How/when am I supposed to be "cleaning up" (if there is such a thing) the video I import before I attempt to burn it? I'd like to be able to make it so that the finished CD can be played on both a PC & a regular home DVD player.

If anyone can give some very much needed advice to a rank amateur, I'm all ears!

Thanks,

T

At what resolution are you capturing the video? I just got this dazzle video thing for 300 bucks and it does pretty much what your ati card does, imports video. The end result is nothing spectacular but it looks fine for spending less than 1000$ on real video stuff. (if you look into it, high quality video editing is freaken expensive)

As for making video cds I would get nero cd burner. Its pretty good, and easy to use. you can play them in your computer and most dvd players

When I say "newbie", man, I mean it! ;^)

I don't know what I did to tell the truth. I was doing a quick check of everything so I knew it was working- had a rebate I had to postmark on the ATI card.

Can you tell me the settings you use & are satisfied with? I'll try it & compare to the snippet I already saved. If you're saying that what you do for settings is about the best I'm going to see, I'll know I'm not doing anything wrong- or that I can stop looking to improve it, at any rate.

Can you also tell me, of tape that you copied, how many minutes equalled what size on the burned CD?

Thanks for your time with this- much appreciated,
T

I have been spending a bunch of time playing with this. I am by no means an expert, but I hope this helps.
I also have an AIW Card. I choose to use Virtual Dub, a freeware program to capture my video.
Also download the Nimo Codec pack to give you some options to record.
both can be found at www.vcdhelper.com

I choose to capture at a resolution of 640 x 480. yes the capture file will be huge.
once captured, I convert it down to 320 X something else using the microsoft mpg3 codec found in the codec pack. and use whatever you want for audio conversion, just remember to add the video filter 2:1 conversion. You can also crop out the bottem couple of lines,, that usually appear form capturing from composite.

great.. now youve got your AVI file, The size will be much smaller now. The only problem left is getting it to VCD, find a translater to get it to mgp format, instead of AVI, Nero will do this for you,, but sometimes not always it compromises quality.

I hope that helps,, and,, VCD Help.com is a great source of information, but some of there tutorials are well beyond me at this time.

Good Luck

Thanks "Temp"-

I appreciate the tips & have printed your letter to refer to later.

I'm so d*mned dense about all of it & just don't know anyone who's doing this (& definitely not with my same card). Sure would be great to have someone "hand-hold" the first time you try something like this. I don't mind making mistakes as much as I hate to keep taking hour upon hour repeating the same steps hundreds of others have already perfected & could pass on (if they were at this site).

Thanks again- I'm going to try tomorrow when I have no kids around to distract me (cannot concentrate well... ;)

T
I've heard of VirtualDub & will d/l it & start reading - again/some more.

VIDEO Studio is by far the better capture and editing software. It can capture directlt from the ATI card and it make the captured video easy to edit. You can create VCD's etc using Video Stuio also.

Read their help file for complete info.