Roxio Easy VHS to DVD export to iMovie for compression

The procedure you are using will not give you the best quality.

All good analog to digital video converters use Firewire (I tried many USB units). Firewire converters give much higher quality and better results. Look at the Grassvalley ADVC300. Audio and Video go in, FireWire comes out.

The program that comes with the ADVC300 has some nice filters that can improve video and audio of the source material. The ADVC300 will take Audio and Video from any source and convert it to FireWire (iMovie will treat it like a camera).

http://www.grassvalley.com/products/advc300

The ADVC300 is for anyone who wants to do editing and is concerned about quality of color and speed, for the novice it is an incredible gizmo that will restore VHS tapes to a state close to the original fixing midtones, highlights and shadows on the fly. Not only can you simply convert analog to digital you can actually manipulate the signal going in (if you want to).

A bit pricey bit it WORKS.

I would use iMovie 06 with iDVD 09.

iMovie 09 uses 'single field processing' meaning every other horizontal line of the video is thrown out, which reduces the sharpness of the footage. iMovie 06 uses ALL of the image to form the video.

Your workflow is editing DV clips and making DVDs, so iMovie 06 is better suited. Your movie will arrive at iDVD in DV format, which is an ideal match for making a DVD: same resolution, same pixels aspect ratio, and original quality. If you share your movie from iMovie 09, it gets re-rendered at 640x480 or less, and then iDVD upscales it back to 720x480. The end result is obviously not as good.

iMovie 06 and iDVD 09 is a "lossless" combination.

iMovie 09 is a wonderful program assuming that you're using it for what it was designed to do, assemble videos to share on the Internet.

Some of the movies are bit too large to record to a DVD

A Dual layer DVD will hold about 3 Hrs and 45 mins (7.5GB) of full quality video.

i can't use a dual layer disk as it will not work with my dvd player nor most others for that matter (already looked into it).

That is not right. 99% of studio released movies are dual layer DVDs. You CAN'T buy a single layer only DVD player, they don't exist.

I have purchased over 25 DVD players going back to 1999. Every single one will play a computer burned dual layer DVD. These units varied in cost from $29 to $900.

Your DVD player is very unique indeed.

What is the make and model of this player?

You should be using dual layer discs. That will accommodate your longer videos.

Ziatron wrote:

Your workflow is editing DV clips and making DVDs, so iMovie 06 is better suited. Your movie will arrive at iDVD in DV format, which is an ideal match for making a DVD: same resolution, same pixels aspect ratio, and original quality. If you share your movie from iMovie 09, it gets re-rendered at 640x480 or less, and then iDVD upscales it back to 720x480. The end result is obviously not as good.

iMovie 06 and iDVD 09 is a "lossless" combination.

iMovie 09 is a wonderful program assuming that you're using it for what it was designed to do, assemble videos to share on the Internet.

If iMovie09 is lossy, and I don't have iMovie 06, what about Final Cut Express or Final Cut Pro? What capture format would be best for edit ready files?

Thanks!

Here is a way to import your DVD into iMovie. [Click here for link|http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2255575]

If Roxio creates an MPEG2 file, the advice about MPEG Streamclip might still help you. I would try dragging your file into MPEG Streamclip first. It may tell you to buy the MPEG2 Playback Component from Apple.

It may also not work at all, in this case, I would right-click on the Roxio file and see if it is a package. If so, select OPEN PACKAGE CONTENTS, and try to find the folder that contains the video that can be dragged into MPEG Streamclip.

In general, DVDs are converted to MPEG2, so the compression of the import file can be 20GB or .5 GB, and the DVD software will convert it to MPEG2, so what matters is the length of your movie.
For good results with iDVD, keep your movie at 1 hour or less. If you need to go longer, pick a lower quality setting (the Professional Quality) in the project properties. This is true for Roxio Toast as well.