Video Captured Low in Quality/Resolution

[kakashi123]

Why is my mini DV video captured and burn on DVD ended up in lower quality?

Captured Sony's mini DV (sony digital trv 27 handycam) video to my PC using Sonic DigitalMedia Plus v7 software. Video Codecs version is Divx 5.2.1. However, the video captured and burned is in much lower quality (resolution wise- little squares on screen) than the original mini DV as seen by directly connecting to TV. I Used USB cable plus a composite cable (for sound) to connect the viewcam and PC.

Before I had captured video using video All-in-Wonder captured card, and the quality was much better. I gave away the old system.

If I want to capture video directly from the mini dv video camara, can I do anything to improve the quality? Thanks!

[kakashi123]

By the way, my PC is running XP Medio Edison with SP 2

[minidv2dvd]

miniDV has to be captured using firewire from the cam to the computer to get the full quality DVavi off the tape and onto the hard drive.

[edDV]

Your USB capture off a trv27 would be 352x240.

An IEEE-1394 (ILink/Firewire) capture would be at 720x480i.

Transfer with WinDV, then encode.

[kakashi123]

Thank you edDV and miniDV for your quick answers. I really appreciated it.

I always suspected the culprit is USB. I had googled the difference between USB and firefire but couldn't find an answer. Should have come here earlier. I will try to use ilink and will report the results. Thanks.