DVD Decoder software, sound and graphics cards

[Mister Bushice]

Bought a DVD recorder, and I need decoder software for it.

Some of the manufacturers send only the unit now, no software, no cables, no paperwork at all.

No big deal, I knew that when I bought it, but the price was very good.

So now I'm shopping around for DVD decoder software. Any suggestions?

I plan on converting a bunch of video we have taken over the years using pinnacle12, so I also need to upgrade my graphics and sound card as well.

My computer has plenty of RAM and tons of storage space plus a deece chip but it wasn't built as an audio/ video processing unit so I gotta upgrade those components.

This is a completely new hobby for me, so I'm not up on the latest and best hardware to buy.

[Shlomart Ben Yisrael]

DVD FAB .

http://www.dvdfab.com/

I run this in Linux under WINE, but being a native Windows app, it should work even better for you.


Also, encoding and transcoding video isn't GPU dependant. I'd bet your current graphics card (even onboard) is just fine.

[Mister Bushice]

It was the Pinnacle software that said I needed a DirectX 9 or higher Graphics card. I don't know if mine is or not, I do recall when I bought this box it was for business use, so the graphic card was stock, I didn't need to upgrade it for gaming or video. I'm just assuming it isn't sufficient, but it might be.

That DVD Fab needs 10GB of space to run? Wow.

[Shlomart Ben Yisrael]

It was the Pinnacle software that said I needed a DirectX 9 or higher Graphics card.

If you're capturing, possibly.

That DVD Fab needs 10GB of space to run? Wow.

To cache and transcode up to DVD-9 (8+Gigs) yes, that's quite normal.

What exactly are you doing with these DVD's? Re-authoring? Simple ripping? If you have a bunch of .avi/.wmv/.mov files you want to transfer to a structured DVD disk with menus and such, I would absolutely recommend DeVeDe. It's cross-platform so pick up the Windows version.l

[Mister Bushice]

It's almost entirely family event digicam vids I want to edit down. I have a decent canon handheld camcorder, one year old. Maybe some add on audio, but no special enhancements. They do need to be web uploadable.

Nothing special skill or quality wise, I just want to capture the present for the future, and learn how to edit along the way.

Pinnacle 12 was a good deal, only 99 bucks, and it came with a bunch of effects CDs so I'm sure I'll be playgrounding for a while but like I said its a new hobby and I didn't want to run into hardware issues while I was learning curving this stuff.

[Shlomart Ben Yisrael]

Okay, I would go with Pinnacle, they seem to have a good rep.

If you ever need a good editor for raw video, Avidemux is free. It's what I use to chop up and put video together with.

[ElTaco]

If you want hard core editing and are willing to pay out a bit of $$, Avid has some of the best stuff that is widely used in the industry. They have a laptop/desktop solution that costs some $ but if you can somehow convince a reseller that you are affiliated with an educational institution or your kids are perhaps in college or HS, you may be able to get it as low as $250 for a license (may be a bit more or less now, haven't shopped for it in 2 years).

Pinnacle is very good for home and small business/pro use, but its definitely not aimed at the high end/pro market. I personally purchased a mid-level edition of theirs a few years back and it was more then capable of doing simple video and audio edits. Of course it helps to have a decent video capture card so that your imports are decent quality. Its easier now, especially if you have your capture in digital format already and you can just use firewire or usb or some other digital method to capture it to your computer.

Honestly, even if your video card was crap, you can go out and buy a good card that supports everything you need for around $50. You could even find one with an HDMI and/or DVI so you can hook it up to your TV in addition to your video monitor so that you can see what your product will look like on a TV. If you really wanted to go pro, you can probably pick up a smaller used CRT monitor that is professional grade for not much money on ebay or some other place to again, make sure that your colors and everything will look good. This is what is generally done in studios. They will usually preview their edits on high end LCDs but a lot of the Pros will still go back and look at it on Pro CRT monitors that are easily color balanced. You can also rent tools to color balance your LCD so you get the best possible match.

Anyway, often times this is what makes the difference between a home video vs a semi-pro or even pro production, aside from the quality of the initial shot of course.

[Mister Bushice]

Actually what I'm looking to get right now is dvd decoder software. There are a bunch of brands out there, they're not expensive but I'm still trying to see which one would be best. Most are designed for WMP, but in the event I decide to use a different player, say VLC, I don't want to have to buy plugs in for every player I have. One generic plugin that works with any player would be fine with me, not sure that exists though... Still looking.