Video Clips to DVD

Hi,

Does anyone know how I can copy video clips either from the TV Home website or ones available on this forum and copy them onto a CD and then play them back on my DVD player.

I've tried many times but with no success, well maybe a small amount, parts of the video file are viewed on DVD/TV but then it seems to crash.

Can anyone help me please???

Many thanks

Greig Harrison

You need to convert them to either MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 and then burn them to DVD with an appropriate authoring application.

If you use MPEG-1 the resultant files must be VCD or SVCD compliant, and for MPEG-2 they must be DVD compliant. You should be able to find all the information you need at the VideoHelp website.

And can I remind you that if you are copying TV Forum clips to DVD, they must be for your personal use only. There have been several "TV idents" CDs listed on Ebay recently and the material was found to be stolen fromTV Ark and other sites. My intervention led to the said auctions being stopped.

I'm not suggesting Greig is one of the culprits. But be warned, TV Ark is cracking down hard on the misuse of its material.

Although I do of course agree that it really isn't fair to steal work that people have been spent time encoding onto their computer, lets please remember that the copyright by no means belongs to the proprietors of the websites in question.

They do of course belong to the original broadcasters and thus owners of websites could take no action against anyone who uses their work...

BUT (and perhaps my main point), any clips from these websites would look crappy if blown up to full screen on a TV after being encoded for a computer screen.

Errr, yes they can. We have complained to e-bay when we've been sure that clips from our site have been duped on to CDs and sold-for-profit and they have stopped the auction and in some cases banned the seller(s).

Irrespective of the tired old copyright argument which crops up here every other month whenever yet another lazy webthief is detected, selling material taken from websites is against e-bay's regulations.

There is, of course, a huge difference between providing highly compressed clips at 160x120 resolution on a not-for-profit website for review/educational purposes and selling them on an auction site for a swift buck.

To be honest, I think the Continuity Booth has taken it a step too far. It's really annoying that you can't download the clips on your own computer any more. Why should a couple of people trying to make a small (yes SMALL) buck, spoil it for a large majority of genuine users? I think it was an over reaction.

If you re-read my first sentence in my previous post, you'll see I disagree with people stealing things you've spent a lot of time sorting out.

However, my point still stands that it's by no means your property to defend. You're very lucky (and so are people like us who are interested in these sites!) that broadcasters are turning a blind-eye to this kind of thing. They'd be well within their rights to get you shut down.

That's only me with my "sensible" hat on (it's virtual, I don't actually own a hat that makes me sensible), of course I love these TV nostalgia sites and spend a perhaps unhealthy amount of time browsing their archives...

Just my tuppence (again, virtual)

But its not YOUR material - it's material that you and others have encoded.

Copyright law allows for use of credited video and audio clips for educational/review purposes, but as all tv pres sites (I think) are run as hobbies, I'm sure most webmasters would remove material if a broadcaster complained. I know I would for sure.

However, the problem with the web is that any site's content is always 'up for grabs' by the unscrupulous and webmasters have little or no control over the material once it leaves their servers.

As soon as we realised that clips from TCB were being sold-for-profit on e-bay we felt we had a responsibility to take some sort of action to prevent this from happening at source.

I'm sorry if you feel this was an over-reaction but taking no action to try to stop this could have been seen as condoning the practice and we're not prepared to take that risk.

You are totally correct, though, it is the minority ruining it for the majority. If the current security measures don't do the trick - and nothing's watertight, of course - then we will reluctantly but certainly close the site for good. Life's too short.

Pretty much all clips encoded by sites and members here are too small and already compressed heavily (usually Real Media format) that it's just not worth bothering to change from RM > AVI > MPEG format for DVD playing.

As and when I have time I convert some original AVIs into MPEG as well as RM format, and put them onto a Video CD. It comes out ok but blurred, thanks to the MPEG compression and initial capture size (300x168). I think capture rate should be up around 700 pixels which my card and PC simply can't cope with. I've hoping to get a brand spanking new PC with DVD writer and MPEG-on-the-fly PCTV card later this year.

BTW, thanks for the VideoHelp link - great site.

I have experimented with RealVideo playback on an Xbox running Xbox Media Center. It replays many of the clips from TV Ark on my TV fine - and is a nice way of watching them. Sure they are nowhere near VHS quality - but they are surprisingly watchable.

Separately I have used by Xbox as a way of transferring MPEG1/2/4 material to a DVD Recorder (domestic RGB SCART fed unit as opposed to DVD burner) and it works fine. The Xbox will even playback 24fps material at 25fps which is useful if you want to watch some material without flickery 3:2 pulldown artefacts.

In our case, the e-bayer had literally just burnt the downloaded .rm files on to a DVD formated as a data disc so the buyer would have had to use a computer to view them.