HDV to DVD

jlang

I hope someone here can help.

I have a couple of 1 hour long Mini-DV tapes of a family event recorded on a Canon HV30 camera in HDV format. The camera owner has lent me the camera so I can play the tapes out. What I want to do is store the footage on my computer (external hard disk has 100s of Gigs of space) and write a DVD disk to give to another family member. No editing, etc. Sounded easy but I'm very getting very confused.

I've managed to create 10Gb .mpg (MPEG-2?) files using Roxio Media Import which came with my Dell laptop. The Roxio MyDVD software gives a "The file you are trying to use cannot be edited, and has not been added" when I try to select the .mpg file, but I don't know if this is because it's a HDV file or some other issue. Windows Media Player can play the file, it looks and sounds great on the screen. I also have Windows Movie Maker but can't get it to record off the camera or play the .mpg file.

Question is what should I be doing, what software/codec should I be using, or more basically, is my plan possible? I still have the camera so I can play the video out again but I don't really want to buy new software so I'd prefer to use what I have or free/open source software. If I can't do this myself, is there a cheap way to get it done. Thanks.

mp22

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