Hi guys, I'm thinking of making my own dvd movies by capturing a live feed of for example, wrestling pay per views (through my tv card's cable connection), then editing the movies by pretty much just adding menus with little boxes that have clips of the action, and burning them to dvd. Since each ppv is like 3 hours, I guess I will also be editing out matches possibly. Does anyone know or recommend any software that will most importantly give me really good menu creation possibilities, let me edit stuff out easily (for a newbie) and is feature rich while not being way too advanced? Money is sort of not an object for the software (so if you recommend like an $800 adobe program thats ok), but the thing is some of the more expensive programs may be for pros, so I do not know if I would really want those, thanks for any advice in advance.

e-mail me @ tradeineurope@hotmail.com Subject heading "cd-rom guide"
i have the answer.

Vegas Video for capture & edit & DVD-Lab for authoring. Adobe premiere & encore are very good but not the same value for money.

fawlty, when you say vegas for capture and edit, dvd-lab for authoring, what do u mean, whats the diff between edit and authoring? Just assuming that dvd lab doesnt capture i guess? Furthermore premier and encore, would those do the job perfectly? even though clearly more expensive? thanks

and as for gavbam, if you dont have something to say in this thread, i am not going to contact you, it starts by me emailing you and you having some type of deal or "answer", if you have something to say, say it here bud, no emails, thats why this is a topic reply based forum.

Authoring is where you take your audio, video, stills for menus, etc. and put it all together into something that once burnt will be recognised and played by standalone and PC based DVD players.

Editing is where you add or remove footage, audio, add fades, transitions, etc.

Editing, etc. would depend on how you capture, etc.

For 3 plus hours you could just encode at half res. This would still be within DVD specs.

Depending on how complex your editing is, you may be able to get away with just using AVISynth, which is free. In fact you could do the whole thing with freeware if you really wanted.

well freeware or not, i mostly want to I guess fit all 3 hrs on one dvd if possible (at non perfect res), and add a menu where I can be able to choose the matches I want from a list, what would you recommend at that point celt?

Celtic is quite right but if you want to pay then adobe will do everything you want and more. It's also a good solution if you are into photoshop as the trio interrelate quite a bit (at least the newer versions do).

This would be the process - Capture video, then edit (e.g. cut, paste, transitions, special effects) with Vegas or Premiere. Encode to DVD compliant audio & video files with Vegas or Premiere. Create menus and chapters etc then generate a dvd structure with Encore or DVD-LAB. Burn with Encore or Nero (or any other burn proggie which can do DVD video). You can also create menus & buttons/objects with photoshop which can be used by Encore & DVD-Lab.

There are a lot of other combinations but DVD-Lab is best value for money for a professional looking authoring program, and Vegas does most things that Premiere does but is a bit easier to use & is also cheaper. Vegas can also come with an authoring proggie called DVD architect which I don't use because it doesn't support my burner. It's quite good though.

Oh & I forgot to add that 3hrs might be a bit much on 1 dvd as there will be quality problems - although it depends on your own tastes of course. For me not much more than 90mins is enough.

Should point out that it is my understanding that although half res is supported by DVD specs, it is only supported as 4:3, not 16:9.

As said either Premiere or Vegas is fine for editing. The latest Premiere only runs on XP though as well as CPU's with SSE support.

If you are going to use Vegas you would probably be better off with DVD architect rather than DVDLab though. Just set markers in Vegas at the start of each match, then you can easly create chapters at those points.

Not sure if you can do a similar thing with Premiere and Encore. All chapter points should be I frames. You could also use CCE to encode and manually add all the chapter points.

Well the PC i'm building will have a 3.0ghz p4 800mhz fsb, im not sure if its p4 or amd that have SSE, but I will have XP, so if the p4 have SSE, then I will be able to use I guess any of those progs without limitation, the only thing that comes into mind now though is...what program (if you guys know) takes the least resources, and or what program (also if u know) takes the least time to render or put together the final product (not including actual burn process) thanks again.

Oh yea, the reason I am asking you what you would recommend, all money aside is because I work in retail and through employee purchase programs, I will most likely end up getting most of the stuff free or heavily discounted (they do it so I can use their products then recommend them to customers), thats why I just want the best, cost aside, shoulda mentioned that earlier.

Least resources? Probably not adobe although I have no definitive answer on that. With your system I don't think resources are a problem though. As for render speed both Vegas and Premiere/Encore use different versions of the mainconcept encoder although I don't know if there are any significant differences. I've heard criticism of this encoder (e.g. it's slow, not as good as TMPGenc or CCE etc) but I think most of it is unfounded. I use and have got Premiere, Vegas, Encore, DVD-Lab and can tell you that for ease of use I always go back to Vegas and DVD-Lab. For more complicated projects I might go for Encore, and for more exotic editing (e.g. smoothly scrolling credits) I might go to Premiere.

BTW - you can export chapter markers from latest verson of Premiere to Encore.

hmm so maybe this beginner will stick to dvdlab/vegas, thx fawlty