Jump to DVD (how about SVCD?
One cheaper solution than the DVD-RW solution mentioned is SVCD. SVCD is a format orginated in China and is basically MPEG-2 video at 480 x 480 NTSC at bit rates up to 2.5Mb authored onto a regular CD or (or very cheap) CD-R. This allows for about 40 min. of video on a CD at the higher data rate. (The 480 x 480 is stretched automatically in SVCD players to standard 4:3 aspect ratio NTSC) I have been experimenting with this format, and it seems to be a pretty good compromise. It is far better than standard VCD format, but not quite as good as DVD. I would rate it about a very good SVHS quality. What I have done is use DV footage from the TRV900 captured in Premiere and using the freeware program bbMPEG (available as a Premiere plug-in) produce MPEG-2 video and audio streams compliant with the SVCD standard. Then I use the program I-Author by EnReach which produces an SVCD image file that can burned on to a CD-R using Adaptec CD Creator. (Unfortunately, no Mac solution yet to author SVCD
