Capture DV to MPEG2

[DJONE77]

I have been using the forum for help for a while but this is my first post.

I recently came across the recommended settings for capturing from DV to MPEG2, I have tried this but I think I am missing something.

Up till now, I have been capturing as AVI, then letting VS9 render the video for burning to DVD (obviously this takes a while).

When using the recommended settings, when I click stop capture, it starts transcoding. I though I read somewhere in the forum that transcoding causes a loss of quality - is this correct?.

I then tried capturing using the recommended settings except I did not change the compression % on either the project or video capture settings and this does not transcode.

Setup:
mini-dv camcorder attached with firewire
computer: laptop, 3.00ghz processor with 1gb of memory, 60gb hd
2 external hard drives, both attached usb 2.0 -
1 for working directory,
the other to store the captured video

the capture type is set to DVD

also, I did create a dvd using the recommended settings and when I play it on my tv it seems the image is "sliced". Every other vertical line is missing - almost like mini blinds turned vertically with every other vane missing. Could this be a result of the capture/rendering?

Thanks for any help!

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi

If you are capturing from a Digital Camcorder via a firewire connection, For best results capture to Format DV. This produces a DV-Avi file about 13Gb per hour.

The DV format selection should remain as DV when your camera is connected.

Capturing to Dv is similar to copying the data to your hard drive, You have no settings to select except for Type 1 from the Options cogwheel.

Any other option like Dvd Mpeg requires the footage to be re-coded during capture, You may have also to set the capture properties, if your pc is not fast enough then you will get the Transcode Buffer kicking in.


You should:-
1 / Capturing to Dv-Avi is easy on your pc and is the best method.
2 / Then edit your project
3 / Then create a video file from share. Select Pal-Dvd or Ntsc-Dvd depending on where you are in the world.
And that’s the next question.
The rendering at this point will take a long time.

4 / Use the new Video file to burn to disc Share Create Disc Add Video

Check out the recommended procedure again, its worth following
http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic. ... f8c4f6b69d


Trevor

[DVDDoug]

Trevor is right!!!

I know MPEG sounds like a good idea, but there are too many potential problems... Including the one that inspired my "signature" below!

I though I read somewhere in the forum that transcoding causes a loss of quality - is this correct?.

Yes, this is correct. More precisely, it's the encoding. These compression schemes work by throwing-away data... hopefully the least-important data. When you transcode, the file is first de-coded and re-construced. Then, the encode process starts throwing-away data again. It's like an analog copy, or a Xerox-of-a-Xerox... Something is lost with each encode.

But, you must transcode from your existing DV to the MPEG-2 DVD standard. It's best to do this as the last step before burning.

MPEG-2 is much more "lossy" than DV. DV is almost perfect. Actually, you can go from DV to MPEG-2 or MPEG-2 to DV without much quality loss...

You start getting into trouble when you go through a 2nd lossy encode. That might be due to a double conversion - MPEG-to-DV-to-MPEG, or due to some kind of edit that requires a decode/re-code cycle (a filter or a crossfade), or by re-coding to a different bitrate, or conversion from one lossy format to another (WMV to MPEG, etc.).