I have been reading all I can about DVD creation (probably too much) and must admit that I am both overwhelmed and still somewhat confused. I am overwhelmed with the piecemeal approaches suggested (i.e. edit w/ a NLE, encode/decode/demux/mux, author, and burn) in that the choices are many with each having significant pros and, more importantly, cons (plus the cost of obtaining many of these components). I am still somewhat confused with the encode/decode and demux/mux aspects - especially when coupled with suggestions like: "... use this authoring program but be sure to not let in encode the video as it's encoder is really poor ..."
While I am capable of absorbing these topics and such I really am just wanting an end result (i.e. a playable DVD with decent to great quality). I have plenty of other areas that I would rather spend my time with as a hobby. What really got me started in this was my fear of my old camcorder tapes of my children when they were young going bad - thus I want to get them transfered onto DVD.
So to finally ask a question here: is it your opinion that I will achieve significantly better results by investing the time to work with all the component parts as in your sites "How To Do Video the Digital FAQ Way" vs. trying again with
Pinnacle Studio (I took your advice and bought a sound card, instead of the on board sound chip, hoping that it would help with my out of sync (OOS) problem that I had encountered)?
To recap my experience and where I am. I initially used
Pinnacle Studio (both 8 and 9) and encountered the audio becomming OOS with the video (version 9 was much worse than version 8). I then started reading such sites and got as far as capturing better via this sites guides with ATI MMC and then editing MPEG2 content using Womble's MPEG video wizard (my experience with Womble was very positive). At that point I became overwhelmed with whether or not to demux and doink with audio aspects and then author. The choice of authoring programs and thier respective pros and cons just didn't leave me with a clear choice on which to proceed with.
If your answer to the above question is to proceed with the components approach then would you please suggest a full solution path (and maybe it will be to follow the "Straight conversions on perfect or imperfect sources") and I will proceed with the next steps and ask specific questions as necessary.
By the way - have you tried the DVD-lab authoring program (it seems to be good on the surface reading a guide on the doom9 site)?