help an idiot burn a DVD

[scm1001]

I recently got a laptop (XP-1.7 GHz) with a DVD burner in it. Great - time to turn hours of Sony camcorder family fun into DVDs.

OK - Windows movie maker recognized the camcorder and inputed the files as WMVs. Spliced several together to make a test 3 h movie about 850 Mb. Assumed this would fit on a DVD but guessed no DVD player would play it.

Had Nero express 5.5 and power DVD 5 supplied with the laptop. Power DVD did not want to open the WMV files, and couldnt find a proper option on Nero express (it didnt seem to want to burn directly from WMV, only from a proper video format).

OK looked at freeware - am using DVD maker Free which is currently "transcoding" the WMVs into some unspecified format for burning. This may work but the transcoding process will take 30 hours! Too long.
Found another free translation program STOIK Video Converter 2.1.1 but when it started to convert the files into what it called a video format it was obviously not compressing it and the resulting file would have been about 100 Gb, so had to abort.

Is there a cheap and quick method to do what I want? As you can tell I dont really even know what formats I should use or what software or what settings. Maybe if they werent imported as WMVs in the first place it may help, but only Windows movie maker seem to recognise the camcorder. Quite possibly Nero would work if I knew which switched to throw.

[scm1001]

there does seem to be a raft of shareware and freeware that might do it but I am wary of some of these programmes such as Burn4Free that includes bundled toolbars and such. Would be happy to get any recommendations for other software and would even pay for something decent.

[DWMarch]

Well, some DVD players do play WMV, which would allow you to just drag and drop the files in a program like Nero Burning Rom. But assuming your DVD player doesn't play WMV (not every DVD player does) your issue is how to convert from WMV to DVD format. Once you get that sorted, you're set. Unfortunately I can't recommend any particular programs for doing this, as I don't know of any. But I know they do exist.

[Tapioca Dextrin]

If you want something really simple (dumb enough for me to use), try DVDSanta. No bells, no whistles - it just byrns DVDs.

[neutron star]

Here are several guides that cover WMV to DVD conversion.

[Mangetout]

I do quite a bit of video editing and DVD production from my own raw footage; I've done what you're describing (and wmv format is) the stickiest point in it), but I don't think I could describe the process, as I use several different bits of freeware to do the transcoding/encoding, multiplexing, authoring and burning as independent stages.

However, I have a friend that uses, and swears by, Cyberlink PowerDirector; it will do everything you want; I think it will handle the input from the camera too, bypassing WMM.

[daffyduck]

NeroVision Express or Nero Vision 4 will do the capture from the camcorder into avi or mpeg-2 format for you which will make the whole thing easier. Whatever application you use, your priority should be avoiding format conversions by capturing directly to the mpeg-2 format.

You can get Nero Vision 4 as part of the demo of Nero 7 Ultra here:

http://www.nero.com/nero7/enu/nero7-demo.php

I've been working with desktop video for years and the Nero Ultra packages can't be beat as far as I am concerned. Everything you need in an integrated package. I also have and know how to use professional level applications like Premiere and Avid and various DVD authoring applications. I still use the Nero applications for the majority of the stuff I do. Hard to beat quick and simple.

[Bongmaster]

I use software from Sonic (RecordNow!) that came with a DVD burner I purchased, it works with WMV files no problem. More info here:

http://www.sonic.com/products/Consumer/makeDVD.aspx

[scm1001]

Thanks for the replies. In the end I found that none of the freeware stuff worked well and settled for winavi, if only because it was the first that I found that that worked fully, I am sure there are better ones, but Ive spent days trying lots of programmes and need to get on with my life.