Chapter 15. Converting Tapes to Dvd

Video editing is great, but sometimes what you really want to do is drop a tape in, click some buttons, leave your PC to work its magic, and return to find a finished DVD.

If one-click conversion is your goal, Pinnacle Instant DVD Recorder is your tool. Note that the program offers two modes of operation, Advanced and Wizard-based. To break this explanation into the most logical chunks, I'll describe the steps needed to work in Advanced mode, in the order presented in the Wizard. That way, no matter which approach you choose, you should be able to follow along in the chapter.

A couple of caveats. First, the DVDs you can create with the Instant DVD Recorder are primitive in several respects. For example, all menus are sequential, and you have limited ability to customize their appearance. In addition, you can only add chapter points at regular time intervals like every five minutes, so you lack the precision offered when producing DVDs in Studio. Still, Instant DVD Recorder is much more efficient for quick-and-dirty conversions to DVD than going through the traditional capture, editing, and authoring process.

This chapter assumes that you have your camera connected to your computer already and are prepared to capture video. If not, Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 can get you hooked up.