You guys shoulda come an got me, i live for video lol.
First of all El, if this is standard TV, you recorded at the wrong resoloution. Standard TV is broadcast at 320x240, so 720x480 isnt doing anything but taking up space. Second, your huge 100gb avi files...somethings def wrong, uncompressed you should bet getting 13gb/1hr.
However, if you recorded an HD signal, which is either 1080x720 or 1920x1280, to a 720x480 res then you did alright.
If you want simple, FREE editing, get yourself Avid Free DV. There you can copy/cut/paste commercials, screw with wicked compression settings. This is just like any other NLE prog we use, only this one is free. Lets see adobe do that for ya.
http://www.avid.com/freedv/index.asp
However i cant remember how to use this editor worth a damn, ive been on FCP too long and this is alittle different.
In there, once youve edited your movies, you can compress them in a render. My fav is either Divx, XviD, or for windows users, VP6 (
www.on2.com) GREAT codecs. These are alittle lossy though, im sure youve seen a Divx encoded movie.
Over at Doom9 (im making a stop there myself) im sure ull find a command line compressor, to help save you time/space. When working with video i always suggest ATLEAST 2CPUs and a gig of ram. Although i realize most people arent setup for this, it really does make life easier.
I do not know of any freeware DVD apps at this time however. If your a linux person im sure theres a multitude of DVD out there.
When rendering in this avid program (read the tutorials) youll want to render as DV NTSC (assuming this is for american playback only) 720x480, pixel ratio of .9. But, this is saying you want it as miniDV format. If your going straight to DVD with this, its not bad, your not GAINING quality at all. Actually, you could encode at 352x288, which will give you much more time on a DVD. DVDs actually can play 2 resoloutions, 720x480 or 352x288. Ive done movies with mixed footage, and you cant notice a difference on a standard CRT TV. Flatpanel/HDTV is another story.
I would suggest trying out ulead DVD workshop, only because its simple, and you dont hafta worry about encoding, you just drag and drop, it figures it out for you. Burn right from the app or make a .iso (safer).
Remember, DVDs for TV dont care aabout filesize of the video, its the length that matters. Just like on an audio CD, you can have a 100mb file last 20mins, or a 6MB file last 20mins, 20mins is all that matters.
I hope this helps at all.
I wanna know too.Come september I'll be recording all the Jets games and would like to transfer the files to dvd or vcd etc...
