Do you own a camcorder which records to mini DVD? They do offer some benefits, but man those drawbacks are some doozies.
Here’s the benefits:
- You can easily find a particular point in your movie without scrolling through a lot of tape
- They’re affordable
- You can show your home movie right in your DVD player without having to edit
Aaah, but there’s the rub. Playing it back in your DVD player without editing. Let’s examine that.
Is your DVD player of choice actually your laptop, with a slot loading drive? (Not the one that looks like a cupholder). Stop! You’ll destroy your DVD drive if you place a mini disc in it.
Now let’s look at the convenience of not editing your movie. Well sure, it’s convenient; it’s also, most likely, boring.
Picture “America’s Funniest Home Videos” without the sound effects and each shaky clip is actually a half hour long, 15 minutes of which includes footage of the lens cap, wall, floor, and an extreme closeup of a child’s tonsils.
Geek alert: the rest of the post is rather technical.
There are currently two common formats of DVD compression, MPEG-2 and AVCHD. MPEG-2 is standard definition, while AVCHD is high definition. Both of these are a beast to edit, but for different reasons.
Good luck editing your DVD footage on your computer
MPEG-2 is the compression of most movies that you play in your DVD player. This compression is what enables the computer to take a really huge movie file and fit it on a disc. It does not lend itself well to decent quality for editing.
If you pop one of these discs into your computer, you will not see any files to edit, at least nothing with a .mov or .avi after its name. You will see VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS folders.
Inside the VIDEO_TS folder you’ll see a bunch of unfamiliar files with endings like .vob, .ifo, and .bup. Inside the AUDIO_TS folder you’ll find absolutely nothing.
You’ll need a program like this free one to turn the files into a .mov or .avi file for editing in iMovie, Moviemaker, or some equivalent editing software.
Most likely, you won’t like the quality of what you wind up with. Much of the detail in your movie was lost when it was initially compressed onto a DVD.
AVCHD is high definition recording. Lot’s of detail, right? Well, it depends on your camera.
And again, good luck editing it. Many consumer video editing programs cannot edit this format unless you first convert the files to something they can read. And even then, you need a very fast computer to do it without banging your head on a wall repeatedly.
And, another note. I hope you’re not trying to record the entire dance recital on DVD. Recording time is generally limited to around 22 minutes.
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