I am not sure which forum to post, as this involves several topics.

I am transferring Hi-8 tapes to eventually become DVD's. I have recently purchased a Sony Digital 8 camera and am trying to find the better method for the conversion process.

My first concern is what DV codec should I use and from my research, it seems that as I am only transferring video from the camera to the computer via firewire, there is no DV codec involved, other than the Sony codec in the camera, used to produce the initial video. This seems reasonable, except before I read this, I tried a test, transferring a small clip from the camera using a variety (or so I thought) of codecs,to "capture" or transfer - Microsoft, Mainconcept, Panasonic, etc. I took each of these copied avi clips into Virtualdub and edited them to the exact same frames and saved as a direct stream avi. I then used Tmpgenc to convert to Mpeg, all using the same settings in Tmpgenc.

The resulting Mpegs were all different sizes and when examined in Bitrate Viewer, all showed significant differences in "Q" level and bitrate. My question, if the DV codec is not involved, why would not each clip compress the same in Tmpgence. Does Tmpgenc then read the codec header and use the reported codec to uncompress before re-compressing?

Another question involves frameserving (with Frameserver from DebugMode) from Vegas Video to Tmpgenc. The time needed for compression is approximately double when frameserving as when compressed directly with Tmpgenc. Also, the resulting Mpeg, when frameserved from Vegas has a different size than when done directly and the "Q" level shows a significant improvement when frameserved. I haven't done any editing in Vegas, just load and frameserve out. I can only conclude that Vegas is using its own codec, which is improving the quality and also slowing the process and then, presumably, Tmpgenc does not need to find the listed decoder.

I hope I have been able to expain my questions, as I am rather confused by all of this, at the moment.

any help much appreciated,

andie