I've seen them as low as $149 (HP at CompUSA) now. I'm just not sure what to look for. What are brands to stay away from? What features are important? Thanks.
I saw one last week on Fatwallet.com for $120. http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/messageview.cfm?catid=18&threadid=224864&highlight_key=y&keyword1=%24120 As for my 2 cents on DVD burners, im waiting till they go down below $100 without a rebate, blank DVD's will be below a $1 each, plus I am still not sure how long it will take to burn a whold DVD.
Are you using these for archival purposes or movies? I've been reading a little and the lifetime of some formats seems very suspect. Not sure what is a good format for backup nowadays - hard drives put into storage?
Probably mostly for home movies. I'd like to have something more permanent to save the videos of my little one.
I have an HP one, and it works very well. It's one of the DVD+RW external ones. I've not used any other ones, though, so I can't compare and/or contrast. But mine (which I've had about 3 months) has caused me no grief.
Ryan, what's a good way to transfer from 8mm to digital(non-dvd). Basically, I have home movies on 8mm and I want to have them on my computer. I don't have a RW-dvd yet, so...something either wav/mpeg or miniDV. What do you think?
I don't know, everything I've shot has been on miniDV, so I input that straight into the computer over Firewire. I don't have any experience with non miniDV stuff. So, I'd probably copy it to miniDV and input it to the computer through Firewire to edit (I assume you are talking about 8mm video and not 8mm film, which I have even less experience with). But there are some decent breakout boxes that have regular RCA inputs that can hook non-Firewire cameras up to the computer. I had a cheapo card for awhile from Pinnacle that did it. On the topic of DVDs, I downloaded the trial version of Adobe's new Encore DVD authoring program. It is very cool. I've only been playing with it for a day, but it works fabulously for DVD authoring.
I also have the HP (external) and it works great for me. And doesn't take very long to burn (esp. when connected to firewire, but will also connect to USB). General Issues: Different formats: '-' or '+' . Check your home DVD player for compatibility beforehand. Small Discs: 4.7 GB won't hold a lot of the new movies all on one disk, even after removing the 'extras'. I imagine the next series of burners and disks will, maybe they're already available. Don't know.
Ive been using the new Encore DVD, and it beats the other 6 programs I have tried. Hands down. The integration with Photoshop is just the icing on the cake. don grahamleone. you can get an older capture card to do what you want. or if you have plans to do this sort of stuff often, I would invest in an ATI AIW card (one of the newer Radeon families) I have had problems witrh A/V sync with the usb cap cards and have heard the older AIW's weren't the easiest to use. I currently use a NEC-based DVD+R/RW burner...it has worked great for me. It only takes about 10-15 minutes to burn an entire 4.7G DVD. NEC makes burners for a few other companies, so it isnt easy to findout which ones are which.. go check the DVDRHelp forums for other peoples experiences with various brands. That site has been invaluable to someone just learning how to deal with transferring movies and stufff to DVD.
Want a good free editing software? Avid, one of the big timers, just put up some free software on their site: www.avid.com/freedv
Dell is having a sale on the Lite-on DVD burners. Lite-On are just rebadge burners made by name brands such as plextor. Only $99.41 for a 4X Great deal. http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&cs=04&Sku=A0152017
I don't know if things have changed recently, but Lite-On makes their own drives in Taiwan. They're one of the biggest OEM manufacturers of drives. Other companies re-badge their drives. I don't know if it's still true since they're always changing, but Sanyo for a while supplied Plextor with lasers.
For the most part, LiteOn does make their own. Just recently their new combo model (+/-) was shown to be a rebadged Sony. Same deal with NECs, they are normally rebadged by other manufacturers. woofer, would you care to share your sources on the lifetime durability issue? I have done a ton of research since I got my burner and havent run into what you are describing. DVD discs are rated at thousands and thousands of plays and lifetimes of years and years. They are not suseptible to heat or magnetic fields, and as long as you take care of the surface..they are supposed to last practically forever. but if you have found info that says otherwise..share it, I for one would be interested to see it.
I would suggest that you purchase one of the newer burners that burn both CD-RW and CD+RW. Reason: If you want to burn a copy of a home movie for someone else, you increase your chances of building on a format that their player can read. i.e.: if you have a DVD-RW burner, but your mom has a DVD player that can only read DVD+RW's, she can't see your home movies CNet just did a review on the new DVD-RW/+RW burners (trying to find the link).. -- droxford
This is good advice. I wasn't paying attention before and bought a burner that burns -R format. My Apex dvd player plays +R format. Luckily, I found a website where you can cut a CD to reprogram the DVD player's PROM quite easily.
From anecdotes on slashdot, CD-R's are only lasting one to five years. Some folks are seeing similar results with DVD-R's. The purported life is 30-100 years. I have a suspicion cheap media is to blame but don't want to spend the money to become a test dummy myself. http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html#3.12 Obviously the government doesn't believe these claims... http://www.itl.nist.gov/div895/isis/datastorage.html
