Guide: DVD Project Workflow Suggestions
 

This short series of mini-guides is being written for a very specific task, using specific equipment. (Someday full versions will appear on the main digitalFAQ.com site.)

Prerequisites:

• VHS tapes, especially EP or SLP mode recordings
• one of the best Panasonic or JVC S-VHS VCRs
• MPEG capture card
• MPEG video editor, Womble MPEG Video Wizard is suggested
• SoundForge plus the SoundForge filter pack from this site, and/or GoldWave
• BeLight + BeSweet
• graphics software, Photoshop suggested
• DVD authoring software, and Ulead DVD Workshop 2 is my favorite
• ImgBurn
• Taiyo Yuden, Verbatim/Mitsubishi or Sony blank DVD+R or DVD-R discs

Your workflow needs to look like this:

1. capture video in WinTV with Hauppauge card
2. edit video (remove commercials, cut junk from before or after show) in an MPEG editor, be it Womble MPEG-VCR, Womble MPEG Video Wizard (my top choice), VideoReDo or TMPGEnc MPEG Editor.
3. take edited MPEG file, re-encode video to best file for a DVD, also converting audio to WAV for restoration
4. restore WAV file (remove hiss, noise, buzz, etc) in SoundForge and/or Goldwave
5. take new clean audio WAV, convert to AC3 or MP2 in BeLight
6. create some nice menus in software like Photoshop
7. author in DVD-Lab with nice menus, good video, clean audio
8. burn DVD folder set with ImgBurn using Verbatim or Taiyo Yuden discs

notes for later
Prerequisites:
VHS tapes, especially older EP or SLP mode recordings
Panasonic AG-19x0P or JVC HR-Sxx00 (7000-9000 series, SR-Vx series) S-VHS VCRs -- the Panasonic works best on the SLP/EP tapes, though the JVC will give a cleaner picture (although it might not track the SLP as well) -- this guide assumes older EP tapes through a Panasonic AG-1980P
MPEG capture card, such as the Hauppauge PVR series or the ATI AIW Radeon AGP cards
MPEG video editor, Womble MPEG Video Wizard is suggested for videos longer than 2 hours ($34 at time of this writing)
SoundForge and.or GoldWave, plus the SoundForge filter pack from this site
BeLight to convert the restored WAV to AC3 -- NOTE: BeLight is the GUI (graphic interface) for the command-line BeSweet audio editor. You have to install Besweet somewhere, and then put BeLight into the BeSweet folder. There is no "installer" for this software. Manually download and unzip it,

This will be included in a new site guide instead of a forum posting. :)