Hi:
I own Adobe Premier Elements, I have ran the trial version of MyDVD,Ulead,Magix and some other lesser know packages. All pretty much stink when it comes to quality of the final dvd and the ability to create 16:9 video.
My DVD camera does not have a fire wire connection so all I can edit in is the MPEG files from the camera DVD. After many hours of trial and error and posting questions on various forums, I have found out I need an editing system that nativly uses the MPEG format so the video is not re-rendered when the final DVD is created. MYDVD by Roxio was supposed to do this, but no matter what I tried it always re-rendered, and it could not create 16:9 video.
So now Pinnacle has an offer going with mulitple rebates so the software is ultimatly free. However, I dont even want to deal with it if I cant get better results than I am with Adobe Premier. Does anyone have any experience with Pinnacle Studio Plus Version 11 with editing MPEG files from a dvd based camera? What about creating 16:9 video?

No experience using Pinnacle I'm afraid. And there may not be many around here who do. You should post at www.videohelp.com

You didn't mention Womble. Womble Mpeg Video Wizard DVD (awkward name) is designed to work with mpeg files with minimum reencoding at edit points. They do offer a 30 day trial for this software. It would be the first of the consumer level editing programs I would try when working with mpeg files.
http://www.womble.com/products/dvd.html

Kerry56:
I did try Womble. It could not read the MPEg file from my camera which was recorded in VR mode. All it could read was the first scene. Since I could not get past that, its as far as I went.
Also, it did not look like you could add music or still photos.
Do you know if you can?

Yes you should be able to import music and photos in the authoring section of Womble. Not sure why it isn't recognizing your files. What extension do they have now? .vro?

I downloaded the manual and it shows support for .vro files, if that is what you have. You can always try changing the extension to .mpeg, which works most of the time for .vob files, but I haven't tried it with something out of a camcorder.

I generally work with tv captures, and edit with VideoReDo, but Womble has more features as an mpeg editor, which is why I suggested it.

Your camera should have settings that allow you to make your video in a mode other than VR.. By the way, this is one of the reasons that I do not recommend DVD video cameras..

You can check out www.videohelp.com, and see what they have for working with VR mode video...