james.zuelow@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote: > > So Kevin and I were talking earlier today and thought that this might > be a fun topic for a meeting. > > I can bring a DV camera and demo going from tape to DVD. > > Since capture is pretty much the same, once we've got the DV captured > we can go through some different front ends for creating the DVDs and > explain some of the pitfalls you can run into. > > Idea? Doing my Scot ancestry proud, I have resisted the temptation to buy a DV camera. My camcorder is an analog Hi-8 critter. In their infinite wisdom, the makers of Kino and Main Actor only capture from a digital source now. Ugh. I have a Hauppauge WinTV PVR card and it captures from the camcorder and creates an MPEG 2. The processor is on the card which is nice - it's able to keep up so you don't get dropped frames like you might using the CPU. Since the editor software doesn't accept a stream from it however, I have to capture it raw at the CLI. Various capture settings such as PAL/NTSC, channel, source and such are controlled with a perl program called ptune-ui. Main Actor will open the file in .mpg format, but Kino pukes on it so I have to convert it to .dv format with ffmpeg which Kino likes. Triples the size of it though. I've not found Main Actor to be particularly stable, and it watermarks your output unless you pony up some $. If it could capture directly (earlier versions did) and was more stable I wouldn't mind paying but Kino is a much better option at this point I think. It will be instructive to see what others are using. Not sure that I want to lug my computer/monitor around, but I might find time to do a slide show in OO.o Impress on the hoops I have to jump through. IIFC, Tom said the libs have a projector but we didn't use it last time - what's the scoop Tom, can the lib provide us with overhead capability? Do we have to reserve it? I also don't have a DVD burner. I got a CD burner last year, figuring that I didn't want a DVD burner yet since we're on the cusp of the HD-DVD and Blue-Ray. (Looks like another Betamax/VHS war to me.) I did favor Blue-Ray but it's supported by Sony and they do root-kits. HD-DVD has Microsoft's backing and Windows *is* a root-kit <g> but at least you know that up front. Blue-Ray packs in more bits though. What a quandary. Long story short, I'm not in a hurry to buy a DVD burner any time soon, until the dust settles. All that to say, what would be worthwhile for me at least might also be some discussion on SVCD which should play in modern DVD players. I haven't gotten to the point of trying to create one yet. Much more limited in output file size, and it's going to run in a smaller frame, but I can live w/that. At least I'd have something to send to the grandparents. May be that we have fodder for several meetings here - there's a lot of different aspects to the process... ...Kevin -- Kevin Miller http://www.alaska.net/~atftb Juneau, Alaska Registered Linux User No: 307357 ------------------------------------ The Juneau Linux Users Group -- http://www.juneau-lug.org This is the Juneau-LUG mailing list. To unsubscribe, send an e-mail to juneau-lug-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject header.