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Once you’ve installed and updated the software you’ll want to try and capture some footage. The first port of call is the HP Video Transfer Wizard. This guides you through the process of connecting up your equipment, to creating a DVD using clear instructions and diagrams. If the disc you insert is a used re-writable disc it will offer to erase if for you. HP media is recommended and two discs are included in the box, but I had no issues using Verbatim media as well.

Once everything is hooked up, the wizard presents some simple templates for the design of your DVD. There’s a good few that cover the likely DVD creation scenarios, such as weddings and birthdays, and these will do for your first efforts. The wizard automatically creates menus for ‘Play All’ and ‘Chapters’, which, rather cleverly, are created automatically, using thumbnails taken from the footage. The final screen shows a preview window, which should show your video source if you’ve hooked it up correctly. You then input how long you want to record for, up to a maximum of two hours. The two hour limit is a bit disappointing, especially if you’re trying to transfer a four hour VHS tape.

The final stage is to hit the transfer button. You then have to wait for the DVD to be created. You might want to go and read a book, or should that be write a book. For an hour’s disc you’re looking at a two and half hour wait while the footage is captured, transcoded to MPEG2 and the menus and chapters authored –though this will depend in part of the speed of your PC.

If you use the wizard you’ll also want to make sure that you have plenty of free space on your ‘C’ partition as this is what the wizard uses for its temporary files - and rather annoyingly there’s no way to change this.

While it takes a long time, it’s worth the wait, as you’ll have a basic but functional DVD to enjoy. My test disc looked excellent, though quality was constrained by the VHS standard of the source material. It also happily played back on my PC, my Macintosh iBook G4 and on my three year old set-top Sony DVD player.

To top it all off, the wizard will also print a DVD case insert using stills taken from the footage. This can be done at the time or saved for later.

For those who want a little more control over the proceedings ArcSoft Showbiz 2 is included. This is a traditional timeline based DVD authoring package, which enables you to edit your material, and apply transitions and effects.

While programs such as Showbiz are sold on the basis of how much fine control they offer you over every stage of the process, MuVee AutoProducer takes the opposite approach. It does everything it can to produce a finished video from your raw footage, with you having to do as little as possible.

Rather than having to spend time mucking around with timelines, storyboards and waiting for effects to render, it takes your footage and applies a style of template such as a super-fast pop video or old news reel. All you have to do is point it at the clip and an audio track and away it goes. The final product is actually highly effective and can be burnt as a VCD or DVD. It’s essentially fast food video editing for the terminally lazy, and I have to admit I loved it. Having the HP version 2.1 on your system entitles you to a $30 upgrade offer for version 3, which adds extras such as more style templates, WMA support and other extras. For my money, it’s a worthwhile investment.

The rest of the software includes Veritas Record Now for regular CD burning. This is decent but Nero is still the best basic burning tool on the PC. Veritas Simple Backup is as its name suggests a basic tool, but in keeping with the ethos of this drive it’s an effective and easy to use package.

Finally Cyberlink Power DVD is included so you can play back your DVD creations.

At £265 the HP Movie Writer is not cheap, but it’s a good value package. If you’ve already got a DVD burner or don’t want an external unit you could go for something like the Pinnacle Studio MovieBox. However if you prefer a neat all in one solution, the HP Movie Writer DC3000 is a good choice. Its analogue to digital capture works well as does the software, and it’s suitable for both the novice and the more ambitious user.

Verdict

This is a beautiful way of capturing footage from VHS and analogue camcorders for posterity. It’s not the speediest drive around, or the smallest, but it will produce good-looking and compatible DVDs.

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