Digital Focus: Make Your Own DVDs

Feature: Create Your Own Home Movies on DVD

It's not quite up to the quality of The Matrix, but not long ago I made my first movie and put it on DVD. And while I was prepared for the worst, it turns out that the process is relatively simple. If you have a digital video camcorder, a DVD recorder, or a CD-RW drive; a huge slab of unused hard disk space; and some time to kill; you too can become a home-movie producer, churning out your own domestic hits on DVD. Heck, I've made a half-dozen movies now; I have DVDs of scuba diving trips, grade-school pageants, and my cat Hobbes. In this issue, I recommend PC hardware and software to get you started.

Sizing Up DVD Recorders

If you want to make honest-to-goodness DVD movies, you need a drive capable of recording to recordable DVD media. Such a drive lets you copy data onto a 4.7GB disc in a format that most DVD players can read.

The confusing part is that several formats abound. In addition to DVD-R--the format that's most likely to play in the DVD player hooked up to your entertainment center--you can also find DVD-RAM, DVD-RW, and even DVD+RW drives on sale. Check out our review of the latest drives.

Not all of these formats can play in your living room's DVD player. Suffice it to say that DVD-R is your best bet because most of the latest drives (with the notable exception of DVD+RW) can write to DVD-R media. A couple of caveats: Make sure you know what you're buying; and if you have a really old DVD movie player, all bets are off. Fortunately, prices have dropped on recordable DVD drives recently, sometimes dramatically. For example, since the last time PC World looked at recordable DVD products, the Pioneer DVR-A03 DVD-R drive dropped from $799 to under $500. At press time, I found units for about $380 on our Product Finder.

Check out the PC World review of DVD-R drives.

Installing a recordable DVD drive is about as difficult as adding a CD-RW drive or a hard disk. Windows should automatically recognize the device, so there will be no drivers to install. You'll need an available secondary IDE connector, a spare internal power lead, an empty, externally accessible drive bay, and a screwdriver. Your secondary IDE connector is the one your CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive is already hooked up to; you can connect up to two drives per IDE channel. If you already have two devices hooked up to your secondary channel, such as a DVD-ROM drive and a CD-RW drive, you'll either have to remove one or install an add-in IDE adapter card to increase your system's complement of IDE channels.

DVD Video Editing Software

Once you've recorded your movie, you'll need to edit it. If you already make your own videos, you are no doubt familiar with video editing software like Adobe Premiere. But if you want to turn your home movies into DVDs, you'll need to upgrade to a program that supports DVD recording. Your old copy of VideoWave 2 just won't cut it anymore.

Thankfully, many video editing applications are now updated to support DVD production. Here are some products I like that have DVD support built right in:

• Pinnacle Express DV
  
  
• MGI VideoWave 5
  
  
• ULead MediaStudio Pro
  
  

Are you looking for a good primer on digital video editing and production? Check out "Must-See DV."

Quick and Dirty DVD--Without the DVD

Believe it or not, you don't actually need a DVD-R drive to make movies that will play in standard DVD players. Most current DVD movie players recognize a virtual zoo of formats, including Video CD (also known as VCD). The VCD format is a subset of the CD media family, so you can use your existing CD-RW drive and CD-R discs to create VCDs. The downside? VCDs have a resolution of 352 by 240 pixels and use the less-sophisticated MPEG encoding format. For comparison, DVDs are encoded in MPEG-2, which has a resolution of 720 by 480. The upshot is that you'll see some pixelation and lots of compression artifacts in your video. But you can fit 74 minutes of video onto a VCD, and it'll play in almost any player on earth.

Any video editing program capable of creating DVDs can also make VCDs, so you can start with your CD-RW drive and upgrade later without changing software. So if you want to burn a home movie onto a disc that'll play in the DVD player at grandma's house without buying a $400 DVD-R drive, making VCDs on a CD-RW drive is an affordable alternative.