I need to buy more memory

I don't know whether to put this under Science & Technology, or Outside the Asylum.

There's a movie -- an Italian movie from 1989 -- that I've been wanting for a couple of years. As far as I can tell it's never been released in a Region 1 DVD.

So I checked our local internationally-famous movie rental house, Scarecrow Video, who have everything by everybody, and sure enough they had it -- in VHS.

I thought, no problem, I have a VHS player.

Then I thought, hey, as long as I'm VIEWING it why not dub a copy and make a DVD of it? Making DVDs is something I've been wanting to do with my new computer. I dubbed a few VHSes about 7-10 years ago with my old computer, but the new one has much better DVD Authoring software.

But first I have to get the analog video captured to my computer. How did I do this before? I honestly cannot remember. Did I have an analog-to-digital video converter? I looked through all my electronic bins and didn't find one. Did I have some sort of card on my PC (pre-Apple even) for inputting analog video? I simply cannot remember. Ten years ago is a lifetime.

So I checked a couple likely stores in the area. No luck.

Checked Amazon -- there are adapters galore, and reasonably priced -- but my VHS rental runs out in about 4 days.

Paid for expedited shipping on one.

This DVD is ending up costing me more than I'd planned. Oh well, there are several other VHS projects I'd like to undertake once it arrives -- assuming it works.

But how the fuck did I do the last ones I did? I really have no recollection. Memory parity error.

This is what I used to use. Works pretty well.

This is what I bought. Same idea.

Arrived today (yay!) and looks like it's gonna work fine, but ...

The first tape I put in my VHS player to test things -- NOT the rental -- got eaten. Now I need to disassemble the fucking player and extract the tape. Not what I had planned for the afternoon!

Yay, I love it when stuff works the first time.

Extracted the tape -- easy -- tested another VHS -- didn't get eaten -- popped in the rental, hit play, hit record on the software and by Jesus it seems to be recording.

I'll know in 84 minutes.

Video captured successfully. Now to learn iMovie and figure out how to create chapters and a menu.

Well authoring is definitely the hardest part of the project. iDVD is no longer part of the Mac suite, the shareware Burn has no menuing options, and it fails the burning process with indecipherable errors.

Will try again.

Finally got a successful burn, but my DVD player says the disc is an incompatible format. WtF? DVD-Video isn't the right format?

Are your video files MPEG-2?

Fukifyno. MP4 I think? The software very cleverly hides the extension.

I probably need to spend some money and buy a program that not only burns DVDs, but allows cutting into chapters, menuing, etc.

Got any recommendations?

MP4 is an extension used for mpeg-4, so that might be alright, but I'm not sure.

I used this software several years ago. It works great.

Quote :

Windows® 7, Vista or XP (32-bit or 64-bit editions)
1 GHz processor or better
2 GB of RAM
1 GB of free disk space
Minimum screen resolution: 1024 x 768 (highly recommended higher resolution)

Oops.

Top 10 Best DVD Authoring Software For Mac

Quote :

Burn is an application that was designed for advanced disc burning using your Mac, though it also has utilities for DVD authoring. With this application, you can make personalized movies in DVD format complete with interactive menus and personalized themes. You can also customize settings including file permissions, file dates and other DVD settings. Furthermore, it has tools for video and audio conversion to your desired format. Best of all, it is free.

No kidding?  Guess I should poke around in there a bit more.  I didn't see the DVD authoring tools.

The article is suspect however because iDVD was discontinued in 2010.

NoCoPilot wrote:

The article is suspect however because iDVD was discontinued in 2010.

Maybe they offer the opportunity to download the old version. There are various programs that used to ship with Windows that are not longer part of the standard installation, but they can be found and downloaded.