what software for home movies? (Mac or PC)

[radhak]

I need a good software for writing home movies to DVD / VCD. I have been using iDVD 4 on the iMac, but it's giving me problems in my latest efforts.

In the past I had simply dumped a captured video from my digital camcorder (using iMovie) onto DVD and it worked well. Now I wanted to merge 4 different videos into a single disc split up as chapters. ( 1. Birthday Party 2. Swimming Pool, etc). While it wrote it okay, I find that the last 2 chapters have no audio on the DVD. What's on the computer runs fine, it's just the output DVD that has this problem.

Tried burning another disc with Roxio Toast, but it blew up with a 'disc error', did not even complete the burn.

I know, not many Mac people here (Anna, you reading this?), so am open to Windows software too.

What software(s) would you recommend for
(a) capturing video off the camcorder
(b) creating a nice movie; nothing too fancy, just some chapters and some overlayed text for comments in between
(c) burning the DVD / VCD.

I am willing to purchase more software, but only if it 'works'...

[Ken Massingale]

I've been happy with Roxio DigitalMedia Studio Deluxe by Sony.

[Anna]

Hi, Radhak,

iDVD 4 has a lot of bugs, as you can tell. First, download the latest iDVD 4 update. Then make sure that you have the same formats chosen in iMovie and iDVD (NTSC instead of PAL for American playback), and that your camcorder is set at 16 bits instead of 12. That solved some of my iDVD 4 problems a couple years ago. It also helps to have a lot of free disk space (>25 GB). If that doesn't solve it, you can try to extract the audio in iMovie before sending it to iDVD.

Right now I'm using iLife '06 suite and I'm quite happy with it. There are a couple of things in iDVD '06 that were a pain, but I've figured out the workarounds by now and I haven't had any problems in a long time. The new themes also look much cooler.

If you know someone who has the install disc, you might want to borrow from him/her to try it out before buying it, especially since iLife '07 is probably coming out soon. If you have any problems with it (like the burning taking too long or it reports that there is not enough space on the DVD), I'll be happy to help. I had to wrestle with those problems, too; a little adjustment to some settings will fix them.

It's also better to burn your movie as a disc image first instead of onto a disc right away. I don't remember if iDVD 4 has that feature, but I use it in '06 a lot. I've had cases where the rendering process went okay, then something went wrong in the disc burning part and ruined everything and had to do it over. You can play the disc image on the computer like a regular disc and make sure everything is the way you want it without having to waste your blank DVDs.

[LYU370]

Hands down, Pinnacle Studio.

[p8ntblr]

Depends on how fancy you want to get (and of course how much you want to spend). I don't have a Mac but I *think* iMovie is free. If want to shell out some bucks, Final Cut Pro is used by many professionals.

Video Editing is another hobby of mine but I have a PC. Windows movie maker comes free with XP and is a great starter (especially since it's free). There are nice transitions and special effects. It's been a while but I believe you can add chapters. I've now using the Adobe programs. Premiere for video editing, Photoshop for editing pics and titles, After Affects for special effects, and Encore for the menu. I also have audition for sounds but never really use it. This an awsome suite but cost you about as much as a Grizzly 8" Jointer (including shipping). I got each one over time. If you have any questions about those programs I'd be more than happy to help.

[justaguy]

On a PC I use Pinnacle Studio and/or Ulead DVD MovieFactory and both are good for me.

[cgallery]

On a PC I use Vegas (Sony).

[radhak]

Sometime ago I had borrowed Pinnacle Studio for XP, but it kept hanging and I gave up on it. Maybe the newer versions have stabilized?

If iLife06 is definitely better I might as well pick up a copy; I am not sure iLife07 would work great with my 4 year old G4.

And I think by the time I was done writing the DVD I had only 600 MB of space left on the HDD. Most probably that was the culprit? I am now clearing space, hopefully a handful of GBs, should work, shall try again. iDVD 4 does not allow writing to image.

I do have Final Cut Express, but dunno how much better that would be.

Premiere is too costly for my needs; shall look at Ulead and Roxio Media Creator too.

[p8ntblr]

Premiere is too costly for my needs; shall look at Ulead and Roxio Media Creator too.

If you have XP already give Movie Maker a try. It should already be installed but if not here's a link. You might be surprised at what it can do. I've used Pinnacle as well. It's also a great program. Somewhere between movie maker and Premiere.

[Anna]

Final Cut Express is for editing and is an alternative to iMovie. Apple's pro DVD authoring software is DVD Studio Pro. I think Apple has started to bundle the pro apps (Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio Pro, Motion, etc) and it costs quite a bit more to differentiate them from the consumer apps (iLife, FC Express, etc).

Definitely try to free up disk space when using iDVD. Also get lots of RAM. Do you have the lamp-shaped iMac? I have the 1 GHz version with 768 MB RAM, and that's worked okay with iLife '06 and Tiger (and the other iLife versions). I also used a souped up Sawtooth and a Digital Audio G4 with pretty much all versions of OS X and iLife with pretty good results. The Sawtooth is about 7 years old, the Digital Audio is 6 years old.

To p8ntblr: iMovie (with the rest of the iLife suite, i.e. iDVD, iPhoto, iTunes, GarageBand, iWeb) comes free with a new Mac, but you have to buy the upgrades. I think only iTunes is truly free software.

[drumpriest]

I use Adobe Premier, After Effects, and DVD Workshop 2 for mine, but one could argue that it's overkill. I also tend to like the tsunami after market mpeg 2 encoder, higher quality and convolve filter support.

[Richard in Smithville]

I was given' a copy of Nero. It works well for me , plus it was free.

[Jeffrey Schronce]

Adobe Premier, Studio 9 installed. I use them about 50/50. Either way you need plenty of ram.

For simplicity I cant imagine either would be better than iDVD.