Q: Dear Steve,
The other day I shot a party for a friend, and all of a sudden I was confronted with putting the finished result on a DVD. This turned out to be a nightmare! I'm going to tell you about it so you'll understand what probably MOST people trying to burn their first DVD's go through.

I use Sony Vegas Movie Studio 6.0 to edit. I had seen "burn a DVD" as an output option, so that's where I went first. But no, I got an error message that said the Sony DVD Architecture wasn't installed. Turns out it's a whole separate program. Then I began searching the Internet. It seems there are converter programs, encoding programs, and separate burning programs - and some do a better job than others, but trying to figure this out was nearly impossible. Previously, I had ordered the Magix video editing program, and it arrived on day 3 of my nightmare. It said it was capable of burning DVD's. So, I imported the MPEG (but was it the RIGHT TYPE of MPEG???) into it, and proceeded to waste 10 DVD's and that many hours trying to get one decent copy. There was pixilation in parts, and jerkiness, like one frame was being skipped, and pops in the audio. After getting one DVD that was 98% okay, I tried to burn another one from the same file and same setup. It had too many problems to use.

So, either I was born without the gene that allows comprehension of DVD burning, or it is truly a complicated process that requires some instruction from beginning to end. How is a newbie like me supposed to learn all this stuff???

- - Tina L., Tyler, Texas

A: Hi, Tina.
Don't despair. You can burn DVDs. Now, I don't purport to have all the answers, but I'll tell you what works for me. As it stands, under the best conditions, I think the current success rate for correctly playing a DVD is about 89%. This means that, no matter what you do, you'll have problems with about 11% of players.

HOWEVER, there are steps you can take to make sure you're as successful as possible.

1. I've never used Vegas, but if you like editing with this software, by all means stay with it - IF it lets you output your finished video as an AVI file. I use Adobe Premiere Pro. I've tried creating a DVD directly from the editing timeline, and though I've been successful, the transcoding process takes forever and I don't think the quality (even though it played okay) was as good as the same program first exported as an AVI and then imported into a DVD creation program. I use Adobe Encore for my professional DVD projects, but you should be able to do well with software put out by Ulead or Nero or Roxio. So, to sum up, I advise exporting your completed program as an AVI and importing that AVI into separate DVD creation software.

2. Burner. I bought a Pioneer burner last year (model DVR-A07) that came highly recommended from some techie colleagues of mine. This model has been discontinued, but Pioneer has a good reputation and I'm sure the current models are reliable. Regardless of the brand, make sure you have a burner that is compatible with the DVD-R, DVD+R, and DVD-RW formats.

3. System resources. I don't think lack of memory would be causing you trouble, but I would recommend upgrading your RAM if you haven't lately. I recently went to 1GB. If nothing else, it'll help your system run more smoothly.

4. Format: I've had great results with DVD-R. It's the oldest of the formats and has been quite dependable for me. DVD+R should also be okay. I haven't used that format yet, but others swear by it.

5. Avoid the really cheap store-brand or no-name DVDs. I've had good luck with Memorex and am currently trying some Verbatim DVDs, which so far work fine. Stick with the name brands that you know. Perhaps buy a couple of brands in small quantities, burn your video onto them, and compare how they play back on the DVD players owned by your family and friends.

6. Audio: Hopefully your video editing software has a meter window that allows you to see your audio levels. If so, open the audio meter window and play your program. If at any point you see the levels go into the red, adjust them so they stay in the green. Anything in the red will distort when you transcode the file as you create your DVD.

7. Finally, since I am far from the final word on the subject, I'd recommend you check out the forums on a Web site called "Creative Cow." The address is: http://forums.creativecow.net/. The site has a forum for DVD authoring, where you can solicit additional advice.

Good luck. Let me know how you make out.

Cheers, Steve

Got a question about any aspect of family history video production?
Send it to Steve at steve@familylegacyvideo.com.

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