Campquake Senate

Clannies,

I want to make some goofy home movies. I have several recorded DVD's that have been "finalized" by my SONY Handycam. When the DVD is created on the Handycam it saves the file in a format called VIDEO_TS wherein file extensions have .IFO, .BUP, and .VOB. I have no idea what these are, but they appear to work in just about every DVD player and software package I have. The Handycam will also create basic splash pages and minimal graphics.

I am assuming that I could:

1. Get some sort of USB cord or graphics cable for the Handycam to directly feed my computer the images and then capture them, but I've not done that.

2. Capture images from the DVD and then tool them, add audio, and make a much better movie and layout with a software package.

I have WinDVD Creator 1.1 from years ago. It does not recognize the DVD's created by the Handycam. My idea was to capture the DVD movies to the Hard Drive. But I don't know what sort of capture program could turn ISO, BUP, or others into a WMA or compatible type file so that it could be completely manipulated inside Windows/Programs.

Anyone do this out there who can lend assistance?

I have one of them Sony video cameras that burns to DVD too -- and I have found much to my disappointment that the only thing they're good for is putting captured finalized video directly into the DVD player. Trying to edit the videos is a royal pain in the ass.

It has been a few months since I've done it, but I think if you want to edit the video you have to leave the disc non-finalized and use the Sony software to import it from the camera. Then you have to pray your computer has the video codec installed to be able to use non-Sony software to open those files. I think non-finalized video was stored in some old MPEG format of some sort.

I'm never buying a DVD-camera ever again, gonna stick with the tapes

Oh, and VIDEO_TS is standard DVD movie format, its how all the movies you watch on your DVD player are stored.

Thanks!

I went and did some reading and your spot on. It appears that there is no inherent system to feed video from the handycam to the hard drive, as I thought an AV cable might resolve my issue. I should have researched more.

The handycam is good mind you, as I'm able to take all sorts of video, but to add that special music or graphics I should have bought something else, perhaps.

I've discovered there is a program one can take any TS video file and turn it into AVI, which is then easily manipulated per se. So the process is, so far:

1. Move video in TS format from disc to hard drive through DVD Shrink or Nero.

2. Convert TS video to AVI on hard drive with AutoGK.

3. Manipulate AVI with WinDVD Creator and then repeat process to make it TS.

Damn. There must be an easier package for doing this, something right out of the box?

While I was deployed I did video with my Handycam and made mpg movies with it. Maybe it's because I am using Adobe Premier.. wait, I also used the crap-assed ms movie maker and it worked too.

When the WLO does video stuff from the home movies, she uses a third-party s/w to capture the video stream off the camera, then does the editting and graphics addition via the s/w. Sonic MyDVD is the program used.