Need help archiving some old DV Mini tapes

[donaldc48]

In 1998 I purchased a new Sony DCR-TRV9 camcorder, I used that camcorder until 2008 and have accumulated a drawer full of DV Mini tapes that. Will be useless if my camcorder bites the dust. I purchased a 1TB hard drive to record these tapes onto in a format that "hopefully" would be useable in the future. I used a MacBook Pro connected via FireWire and imported them using Adobe Premier Elements 12. The software converted the files into MOV clips. After converting a couple of tapes I decided to check my work and there appears to be a loss in quality between the originals and the resulting MOV files. One of the associates at the local Apple Store is a part time videographer and I discussed this with him and he thinks I am getting the change in quality as a result of the compression. Is there a better way to do what I trying to accomplish? I have the following equipment to work with: MacBook Pro with FireWire connection, IMovie, Premier Elements Pro (Mac), older PC running XP, does not have a FireWire card,but I could probably get one, the PC has Corel Video Studio installed. thank You in advance for the help. donaldc48

[newpball]

If you keep them in the DV format on your computer you have the best option, no loss of quality.

[Cornucopia]

Here's my (educated) guess: You probably did the correct method of using DVcamera -> firewire cable -> Firewire400port (on MBP) -> PE12 -> DV-MOV file. All good so far.

Open up one of those MOV files in QT and go to [Window | ShowMovieProperties]. Choose the Video track and look at the Visual Settings tab...Is the High Quality option CHECKED or not? By default, QT sets it to NOT (stupid, stupid apple, stupid, stupid quicktime - all you had to do was set the player to default to high quality). Set it to Checked!.

If that doesn't do the trick for you, post a detailed MediaInfo text readout here of your resulting (captured, but non-edited and non-converted) file.

Don't believe me? Here's an example (from one of my old, old encodes for McGraw-Hill textbook). The ONLY difference is that checkbox:


Guess which one is which?!

Scott

Wow, in addition to grunging it up, it seems to also fiddle with the gamma!.