Camcorder to CD or DVD conversion?

Can anyone guide me here? Myself and my husband have traveled to many cities and have recorded about 3 hours of time in our Camcorder. I would like to convert those camcorder cassette recordings into DVD so that I can send them to my family in India. How do I do that?

Try YesVideo.com

If you drop your cassettes at a local Walgreens or Wal-Mart, YesVideo will convert them to a DVD and send them to your home. It roughly costs $25 per DVD. You can go to www.yesvideo.com to see your nearest drop-off location.

The article in the link below provides a little more detail around this service.
http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/solution-20040128.html

I asked my husband as to how he converts our tapes into DVDs. He said he uses the Dazzle software. He referred me to this site which has all the information about the product. However, it looks like you can buy them cheaper at Ebay.

Thank you Indira and Pooja for your comments.

When reviewing those 3 hours of video, I also understood that no one (including us) would have the time or the patience to go through everything that we have recorded. I need to edit that down to a few minutes so that my family members would enjoy seeing it.

I also heard that pinnacle software is the best for video editing and hence I am going to buy a copy at ebay (Thanks Pooja).

Indira, the yesvideo option looks a bit costly for me. Since I have the time, I probably think its best for me to edit and convert myself. Thanks for your information.

Ankita

Hi ankitha,
I read ur mail n don't know by this time u knew the solution to ur problem but still I would like to giv a solution.If u have computer at ur home, first copy the contents that u've recorded to the system for which u get a cd with ur handicam that contains the software called "picture package " or something else .later, u can directly copy those clipings/pictures to DVD /VCDs which is just a click away.

bye.
geethavani.

Originally Posted by ankita_chitnis

Thank you Indira and Pooja for your comments.

When reviewing those 3 hours of video, I also understood that no one (including us) would have the time or the patience to go through everything that we have recorded. I need to edit that down to a few minutes so that my family members would enjoy seeing it.

I also heard that pinnacle software is the best for video editing and hence I am going to buy a copy at ebay (Thanks Pooja).

Indira, the yesvideo option looks a bit costly for me. Since I have the time, I probably think its best for me to edit and convert myself. Thanks for your information.

Ankita

Dear Ankita,

This conversion of your footage to DVD is not a easy job for people who do not have any knowledge about Video Editing.

Firstly, there are many Editing Softwares and it is difficult to come into a conclusion that this is best and that. I operate on Mac OSX. And I believe FCP (Final Cut Pro) is the best editing software of Apple. If yours is Windows you need to buy or download that would do accordingly.

Initially you need to capture your footage to your computer. Then put them on the timeline and do rough edit. If needed you can add transitions for better effects. Normally, 3 hours of footage takes appox 40GB of your harddisk space for capturing. So you need to manage the space of your harddisk. Likewise many factors.

If you go to a professional that would be fine. They will analyse the footage and your needs accordingly they will do the necessary editing.

regards,

Vanaja