[coriscapnskip]

Is it possible, using the equipment I have or am discussing acquiring, to get material out of iMovie on the Mac AND from another source such as an old VHS tape onto the SAME DVD? Meaning, I want to put titles and so on to old home movies or other VHS material.

This will be long as it's necessary to describe each step. If my thinking is wrong on any step or section of the process, please jump in to correct me.

I just finished creating titles on iMovie for a movie mostly dubbed directly from a non-digital camcorder to VHS, with only special touches, such as the titles created in iMovie, taken from DVD. I put the titles on DVD by way of Toast as being the most direct and clear method of getting them out of the Mac to play on something compatible with the TV.

THE THING IS, my Sony DVD player would not play a DVD and record on VHS at the same time, SO I had to connect it to a VCR to record the titles onto the tape. So far so good, but very cumbersome. A Sony which will do this in one unit would be over $400.00 while the one I have was only a little over $100.00.

BUT there is a Zenith at Radio Shack http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.js...rentPage=family which will do all this for under $200.00 after the rebate.

QUESTION: does anyone have anything, good or bad, to say about Radio Shack, Zenith, or this particular model?

IT OCCURRED TO ME that if I'm going to return the Sony for a refund--which I most likely will as I'm finding it hard to justify having BOTH the Sony AND the Zenith--it would pay for over half the cost of the Zenith, which does way more, BUT!!!

!!!AND THERE'S ALWAYS A BUT!!! The Zenith (presumably) only has one place to insert a DVD. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but:

--I can't record just the opening titles of future projects from iMovie onto a DVD with the DVD burner connected to my Mac, then put the DVD in the Zenith and record the movie on after the titles, BECAUSE the material first put on the DVD will spread out to take up the whole DVD and they're not rewritable. It all has to be done in one session? Yes or no?

--AND I can't copy from a DVD created on the Mac to the Zenith, as the burner connected to the Mac is not a player, and the Zenith uses the same space, as it were, to both play and record a DVD, and the Sony, which I am returning, is my only other DVD player, so I can't do both at the same time? Correct?

--SO, how would I go about making titles on the Mac and putting them at the beginning and end of the VHS material I wish to use the Zenith to convert to DVD?

(YES, I could borrow a digital camera and run material straight out of iMovie, BUT my friend's digital camera does NOT dub to VHS--so again, I'd have the question of whether it's even compatible to dub to DVD on the Zenith and whether I'd save anything in so doing--and I am trying to get through this whole process without borrowing anything.)

--Probably I COULD run the material back out of iMovie, through my Canopus ADVC 110 converter, into a VCR, onto VHS tape, then put said tape into the VHS slot on the Zenith and record it to DVD, but I have two questions.

1. Wouldn't running it out of the Canopus to VHS result in a generational loss (Digital to Analog) and resulting loss in clarity? And, even if I went ahead and put the titles on VHS anyway,

2. Can I record the titles onto a DVD on the Zenith from a VHS tape, then stop, put the movie from one or more other VHS tapes onto the DVD, then stop again and put the end titles on from the other VHS tape? Or will the Zenith do the same darn ornery thing as the burner connected to the Mac, that is, once you've put ONE thing on, the WHOLE DVD is finished no matter how much else you wanted to put on it?

In other words, even if I buy the Zenith, how do I go about putting titles (from one source) and video (from another source) onto the SAME DVD--WHICH IS MY ULTIMATE GOAL?

Thanks for any help or advice!

[debit72]

I must admit that your post is a little bit daunting and perhaps that is why no one has ventured to answer it. But let me see if I can puzzle through it:

1) You made some title sequences in iMovie.
2) You have some home movie footage in VHS format.
3) You are trying to put the two together onto one seamless DVD.

If this is the case, why don't you just bring the VHS footage into iMovie, edit it all together, and made a DVD from there, using either iDVD or Toast to do the burning? It sounds like you already have a tool (your Canopus ADVC) to do the job of getting your analog footage into digital format.

Sorry if I'm missing something obvious.

This post has been edited by debit72: 04 April 2006 - 09:00 PM

[tsantee]

I concur with debit72. You need to burn your DVD at one time with all the different videos you want on it. Just import each of your videos using the Canopus ADVC to iMovie. You can have multiple iMovie projects (i.e. one for each video you import). Then drag each of those projects to Toast and have Toast burn a DVD with the multiple titles.

Try to keep the total length of all your videos to under 2-1/2 hours if burning to single-layer media.

[coriscapnskip]

SO--if you're saying, of all the movies I want to do this way, definitely put the WHOLE movie into the computer, my second question would be--
--Can I get the video footage directly to Toast 7, completely bypassing iMovie EXCEPT for special editing effects such as adding music and titles? Because, for one, iMovie won't even do a continuous two hours of footage, and, for another, I had enough complications just doing a DVD half an hour or so long by that method, although I will be upgrading my version of iMovie (from 3.0.3) before doing ANY of this so hopefully the next project won't be such an ordeal.

I'll try the manual that came with Toast 7 to see if it gives any indication of how to do this (so far I've imported ONLY to iMovie) and what the limits are as to length (none of the movies are less than three hours, but if strictly necessary I could divide them each into two DVDs of an hour and a half to two hours long.) I could still use the all in one "press-a-button" unit for projects for which I don't especially need titles.

I now HAVE TO GET the all in one "press-a-button" unit BECAUSE--my project was almost there when one more complication arose (you didn't think it was going to let me finish this project without a fight?)

The opening titles went from the DVD to the VHS tape beautifully by connecting the VCR with the DVD player to a plain old VCR and taping them on that. All went well until the closing titles, which contained footage imported to iMovie from the Canopus and then burned to DVD using Toast. The titles were in black-and-white, so I didn't notice, but the DVD played in color and the VCR would record the picture ONLY in black-and-white!

I thought maybe I had one of the jacks in wrong and tried them the only two other ways that would make sense, and it did the EXACT SAME THING every time! I wondered if a switch got thrown on the old VCR when I moved it to assemble this setup, so connected it to the TV and it recorded off the TV in color BEAUTIFULLY. It just doesn't like the DVD! It's a very cheap VCR, a $50 Emerson bought from Wal-Mart several years ago, and no doubt doesn't understand something about the DVD.

It now looks as if, if I want to finish this I'll have to buy a unit which will record from DVD to VHS tomorrow and better hope it works!

[tsantee]

coriscapnskip, on Apr 4 2006, 11:11 PM, said:

SO--if you're saying, of all the movies I want to do this way, definitely put the WHOLE movie into the computer, my second question would be--
--Can I get the video footage directly to Toast 7, completely bypassing iMovie EXCEPT for special editing effects such as adding music and titles? Because, for one, iMovie won't even do a continuous two hours of footage, and, for another, I had enough complications just doing a DVD half an hour or so long by that method, although I will be upgrading my version of iMovie (from 3.0.3) before doing ANY of this so hopefully the next project won't be such an ordeal.

You can use the freeware application Vidi to import the video from the Canopus to your hard drive without using iMovie. It doesn't have any time limit. Toast cannot do any editing of that video other than setting the start and end point of the movie.

You can do movies longer than 2-1/2 hours with Toast. Let's say you have a 3-hour video you want on a single-layer DVD. Set everything up in the Toast video window and then choose Save as Disc Image from the Toast File menu. When the disc image is finished, select that file using the Image File setting in the Toast Copy window. When you click the burn button Toast will ask if you are burning this to a single-layer or dual-layer disc. When you select single-layer Toast will do some additional compression to fit the movie to the disc, and then burn the DVD.

[debit72]

tsantee, on Apr 5 2006, 07:24 AM, said:

You can use the freeware application Vidi to import the video from the Canopus to your hard drive without using iMovie. It doesn't have any time limit.

Thanks tsantee. I was wondering if there was something like this. I have some analog capture to do (using a Pyro A/V Link) and was looking for something besides iMovie.

[coriscapnskip]

On the computer I don't think I have to compress it as I have a double-layer DVD burner. http://www.lacie.com...t.htm?pid=10311 I just wasn't sure what length of project was possible or what was possible to do to it--in other words, could I import bits from different sources such as three different iMovie files and burn them all to one DVD on Toast by doing something in Toast before creating the Disc Image, or does all the editing have to be done before going to Toast?

[debit72]

coriscapnskip, on Apr 5 2006, 11:37 AM, said:

On the computer I don't think I have to compress it as I have a double-layer DVD burner. http://www.lacie.com...t.htm?pid=10311 I just wasn't sure what length of project was possible or what was possible to do to it--in other words, could I import bits from different sources such as three different iMovie files and burn them all to one DVD on Toast by doing something in Toast before creating the Disc Image, or does all the editing have to be done before going to Toast?

You can drop multiple iMovie projects and other sources into a single Toast project. They will all show up as different titles on the DVD menu. If you want them to all play continously on the DVD then you should select the "Play all items continuously" option.

For example, I have a bunch of small AVI clips (no more than 30 sec each) taken with a digital camera. I was able to drop all of the files into Toast and made a DVD. With the "play all items continuously" option the first clip plays, then when it is finished, the next one begins immediately, etc. etc.

[coriscapnskip]

debit72, on Apr 5 2006, 10:44 AM, said:

You can drop multiple iMovie projects and other sources into a single Toast project. They will all show up as different titles on the DVD menu. If you want them to all play continously on the DVD then you should select the "Play all items continuously" option.

For example, I have a bunch of small AVI clips (no more than 30 sec each) taken with a digital camera. I was able to drop all of the files into Toast and made a DVD. With the "play all items continuously" option the first clip plays, then when it is finished, the next one begins immediately, etc. etc.

They play in the order you put them in? That's SO KEWL!

So Wednesday I made a special trip to town (meaning "the big time" 30 miles away from my isolated little hamlet) to buy this thing--a Zenith VCR/DVD burner at Radio Shack--
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.js...04618&cp=2032... to solve my problem.

At least, it BETTER solve my problem. The DVD burner is only single-layer, meaning anything longer than two hours I'll have to do on the Mac. Also, the only way to put material from more than one source on one DVD is with a DVD RW, meaning I'd either have to do it that way and then copy to DVD -R, or just do the whole thing on the Mac in the first place. It should still be fine for running off DVDs of any VHS tapes two hours or under, that don't require special titles, or hopefully even DVDs straight off of material in the camcorder, bypassing the computer, VHS, and other cumbersome steps.

What I need it to do RIGHT NOW is copy my color DVD, to VHS, in color, NOT black-and-white. If it does that, I'm keeping it and mailing in the rebate. If it doesn't, I'm going insane, seriously I am. This one project has consumed four months, nearly solid, a third of a year of my life!!!

So I go to Wal-Mart and they take back the Sony, no problem, and hand me cash with practically no question. I go to Radio Shack and take all that cash plus some I already had and it adds up to nearly $170.00. I give this to the clerk and start to write a check for the rest. And you know what?

The guy WON'T TAKE THE CASH!!!

It seems Radio Shack has a rule that if it's over $100.00, they must have a credit or debit card because if the customer wants a refund they can't just whip out the cash like Wal-Mart. So I take out a debit card, with great trepidation, because of course it's coming straight out of my checking account. And I knew I had enough to write the small check, after the cash, but was unsure whether I had enough in my account for the whole thing, as I just wrote a large check for car insurance. Of course, I had saved Radio Shack for last, not wanting to drive around all day in the rain with this high-tech piece of merchandise, so by the time I got it and rushed to the bank with the cash, it had been closed for 15 minutes. Luckily, when I got home I did the math and found I had enough in my account, but not by much. But honestly! Have you ever heard of any store REFUSING CASH?

[coriscapnskip]

THE ZENITH WORKS BEAUTIFULLY! MY SANITY IS SAVED!!

[coriscapnskip]

Just so people know, IT'S FINISHED, AND I LIVED! It's at my friend's house now to be duplicated!

[tsantee]

coriscapnskip, on Apr 8 2006, 11:24 PM, said:

Just so people know, IT'S FINISHED, AND I LIVED! It's at my friend's house now to be duplicated!

Congratulations! This has been a long, frustrating project for you and it must feel great to succeed.

[coriscapnskip]

*Almost* succeed.

Please see my latest topic.