I've been making DVDs of my POV animations at home for several months now
using the Pioneer A03 on a Dell Precision Workstation 420 - I replaced the
existing CD drive with the DVD, that was the easy part. Keep in mind that
making a DVD involves three steps AFTER the animation is finished:
1. transcoding, which is converting your AVI file to MPEG2
2. Authoring, which is setting up buttons, play order, chapter points, or
what have you and creating the burn-ready VOB files
3. Burning to disk

There are programs that do all three of these, though it is most likely that
you will need software for each. I found the reasonably priced tools to be
very inflexible and unintuitive - I can't list all the tools I used as I am
an editor at a magazine and have an article pending (among other reasons).
But this is not trivial.
You can look at lower-end tools that make the job easier, though they limit
your options in some cases (adding chapter points, camera angles, etc.)
 Ultimately, I got this all working, but it was nothing less than a royal
pain.
Oh ya, the DVD-Rs you make at home are no more than 70% compatible with the
players out there; that's a fact. Some of my disks play in computer drives
but not set-tops, some the opposite, and some don't play at all - you will
never know until you try them.And DVD compression ratios (30:1) are
certainly better than videotape quality, but certainly a long way from
"perfect." I prefer miniDV (5:1) by a long shot, but of course the players
are far less common.
D.



"Bryan Valencia" <bry### [at] 209softwarecom> wrote in message
news:3C0### [at] 209softwarecom...
> Ever since the early days of my first animations in POV, I would create
> these great scenes with stunning effects, but I was always limited by
> two things.
>
> 1. the animation files were huge, even for a few seconds of playtime at
> the size of a postage stamp
> 2. only my friends with computers could enjoy them.
>
> I started posting questions in these very newsgroups about finding a way
> to record animations to VHS tape one frame at a time.  The answer was
> sure, but the equipment will cost big $.
>
> Now I hear that there are DVD-W drives and Movie Composition Software.
>  I supposedly can create a storyboard and just import any video source
> to create my movies.
>
> Jadies and Lentlemen, our time has come.
>
> I know the DVD-W drives are still pretty expensive, but it is now
> feasible for us to do entire movies with (gasp) sound and everything,
> and make it playable to ANYONE with a DVD player, not just on computers.
>  I am going to devote some amount of time and money to making this
> happen, and I know some of you will soon do the same.
>
> In the course of this, it is likely that there will be questions that
> need answering, like what studio software works the best for us POVers,
> and what resolution(s) should we render at for the TV format... What
> video hardware works well and even what flavor of Windows/Linux/Beos,
> whatever makes the job easy.
>
> Just for grins, who can I get a show of hands - who agrees, and how
> should we keep each other informed about this stuff?  Or am I the only
> one who wants to do DVD movies using POV?
>
> BV
>

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