How to convert Mini DV tapes to DVD

MiniDV camcorders make shooting video and transferring the video content to a PC easy. Once the video has imported on PC, video content can be edited, converted for online sharing, or backup it to a DVD. For this tutorial I am going to show you how to convert Mini DV to DVD and make your own DVD menu.

Transfer Mini DV to PC

Like I just said we have to transfer the video from Mini DV to your computer before we start to burn Mini DV video to DVD. I assumed you have connected your Mini DV and PC with the IEEE 1394 cable correctly. Now, Launch the Windows Movie Make that already installed on your Windows XP, Vista and Win7 and do following steps.

1. In the Movie Tasks pane, select Capture Video.
2. Click Capture from Video Device.
3. On the Video Capture Device page, select Available Devices and click your DV camera.
4. Follow the prompts to name and save your captured video file.

Tips: You can also take advantage of Windows Movie Maker's advanced features to customize settings for capturing video and audio.

You can save your movies on your computer's hard drive.

1. Select Save to My Computer.
2. Enter a title and choose a place to save your movie (the My Videos folder is the recommended default location).
3. Click Next.
4. Select the quality setting for your new movie.
5. Click Next again to save your movie.

The video format should be .avi or .wmv. The next step is to burn those digital video to DVD.

Convert Mini DV video to DVD

The tool we need is a DVD Creator software - Daniusoft DVD Creator, it can easily burn popular video format (.avi, .wmv, .mp4 etc.) to DVD. Below I will show you how to burn a DVD from Mini DV cassette step-by-step.

Pre-requirement: A blank DVD disk(DVD +R, DVD-R, DVD+RW or DVD-RW), rewritable DVD-ROM, Daniusoft DVD Creator

Download Daniusoft DVD Creator

Import Mini DV videos

The first step is to import the video file that needs to be burned onto a DVD. Select/drag the Mini DV file into the main interface of D DVD creator. You could check the video size on the measure bar on the bottom. Make sure it doesn't exceed the total DVD capacity.

DVD menu making

Click "Menu Template" to customize your DVD menu. There are different styles of built-in templates, frames and buttons for your choice. To apply a template, frame or button, you can just double click it. You can even add text, background music and background image to customize the menu.

Previewing Mini DV video

Just for make sure everything goes as your plan you could have a video preview before burning it to DVD.

Convert Mini DV to DVD

Now you can convert to DVD disk. Go to set TV Standard (PAL/NTSC) on "Setting" option and output Aspect Ratio (4:3/16:9) on "DVD setting bar", Click "Burn" and then select your DVD drive (if you have more than one DVD drive on PC) and Click "Start" to burn your project.

Tips: The volume of DVD use is shown on the bottom side. You can select DVD type of "D5" or "D9". If the video size is exceed the DVD capability you can reduce it by setting output quality. E.g. select "high quality" instead of "Best performance"

That it, with Daniusoft DVD Creator, you can convert Mini DV to DVD and even make your own DVD menu in few steps. And the application also can burn other common Video like AVI WMV MPEG MOV FLV MP4 MKV M2TS, etc to DVD and is fully compatible with Windows 7 (Daniusoft DVD Creator MAC version is also available here).

Sounds Good?

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