sorry...newbie help needed

[debege]

Hi guys,

Newbie alert I am afraid! I am in desperate need of help. I am a self confessed moron when it comes to technology, and yet I have been out and bought a VGN-FW11ZU laptop, having been suckered by a salesman who assured me that burning the HD footage from my Sony HDR-HD3 camcorder to BD disc would be easy, even for an idiot like me.....he lied

Thing is, if I do not manage this task, my good lady will not be able to watch the collection of holidays vids she values so much on our HD tv (connecting the camcorder to the tv and navigating the resulting menus is quite beyond her in my absence). This then means that she will undoubtedly find some rather painful ways of reminding me of my shortcomings, and elderly or not, there are certain parts of my anatomy I would rather were left undamaged!

Firstly....which of the video editing/burning facilities on my machine would be best for transfering my HD footage to Blu-ray disc? My initial fumblings seem to come up with things that require my camcorder to be connected by firewire (ilink, whatever), and yet I had expected to use the HDMI connection....is this correct/normal?

Secondly, where do you 'in the know' people obtain your BD discs from, at a reasonable price? My initial looks on the internet came up with a price of £12/14 for a single 25GB disc (including postage)....Surely this is not the best price available

Sorry to inflict my dumd questions and problems on to you guys, but thanks in advance for any help offered-you will never understand just how much my life depends on some footage on disc....even un-edited stuff would save a lot of the pain

Cheers, Dave.

[Thalamus.]

Hi D, :smileygrin:

have you tried searching Google for traxdata BD reviews, that may help with your decision..

[debege]

Hi Thalamus (in full) :smileytongue:,

Have you tried googling reviews on the item in question? I did, and after much searching through the dross, I found precisely ONE review by a member of the public (?)....and that turned out to be on Amazon....nuff said

Now....to more burning matters (excuse the pun). I have just indulged in my first foray into editing some footage from my HD camcorder, and burned the result onto SD DVD,t before commiting to the expense of a write once BD disc!

To say the resulting PQ was disappointing was an understatement....discs burned from the same camcorder onto SD DVD on an old Philips DVD recorder were WAY better (before it died)....PLEASE tell me that I have not just spent an arm and a leg on what I thought was top of the range, cutting edge technology, just to find it cannot perform a simple task like that anywhere near as well as a £150 piece of kit out of the ark????

I must qualify this by admitting that I did tell the software involved that I would be burning to BD at the start of the process, as the 'bottle out' to test on a cheapo DVD was a last minute thing....but surely this would not cause the problem.....would it?

Cheers, a VERY worried Dave.

[debege]

Anyone