Quality Issue : Mini DV -> Firewire -> DVD

[sc2138]

I thought using Mini DV to shoot video and transfer to PC using Firewire interface and make a DVD (using SONY MySonic) would create a DVD with superb video quality -- because there is no signal loss or degrade during the transfer.

But the truth is not. (?) It seems that the video quality of the output DVD is still not as good as the original video as I saw in the viewfinder or direct play from Mini DV player to TV. It's darker and with occasional blocky screens.

Is it right that there is still degradation with this scenario? If yes, is there any way I can improve the DVD's video quality?

Thanks.

[spamagnet]

I thought using Mini DV to shoot video and transfer to PC using Firewire interface and make a DVD (using SONY MySonic) would create a DVD with superb video quality -- because there is no signal loss or degrade during the transfer.

But the truth is not. (?) It seems that the video quality of the output DVD is still not as good as the original video as I saw in the viewfinder or direct play from Mini DV player to TV. It's darker and with occasional blocky screens.

Is it right that there is still degradation with this scenario? If yes, is there any way I can improve the DVD's video quality?

There will always be some degradation, because while all the conversions are digital, you are moving from one lossy format (DV) to another lossy format (MPEG2). If the MPEG encoding is not done properly, you can definitely end up with a crappy DVD.

The main things that will affect the quality:

1 - The quality of the original video.
2 - Pre-processing before encoding.
3 - The quality of the MPEG encoder.
4 - The bit rate of the final video.

1. Original video
The quality of the original matters a lot because if it's noisy (because there wasn't enough light, for example), then even a good MPEG encoder will have trouble.

2. Pre-processing
I highly recommend at least a little bit of "tweaking" using a tool like VirtualDub. If you're going to edit the video and/or encode it on a PC or Mac, you might want to deinterlace it. Smoothing the image slightly to remove noise ("denoising") can improve the image and make it easier to encode. You can also lighten the image if it's too dark, and lots of other things. Since VirtualDub will not encode directly to MPEG, I recommend outputting to an lossless codec such as Huffyuv*. This will result in a large intermediate file, however.

3. MPEG encoder
I have no experience with MySonic, but I (and many others) have had good results with TMPGEnc**

4. Bit rate
The bit-rate on a DVD can be anywhere between 3000 and 8000 kbit/s. Cranking the bitrate up as high as you can will help the MPEG encoder get the best image quality possible. If it's a short video, crank it up all the way; otherwise you'll need to calculate the proper bitrate in order to fit your video on a 4.7GB disc.

Good luck! Post back here if you have any further questions.

Regards,
Rob

* Try http://www.divx-digest.com/software/huffyuv.html or http://math.berkeley.edu/~benrg/huffyuv.html
** http://www.tmpgenc.net/e_main.html

[tjtoed]

I do this same thing and I capure my DV video using Windows Movie Maker 2 and capture it as DV-AVI. This DV-AVI setting can also be used to edit the movie and then save it back out to the DV tape, so the quality is pretty good. But, this creates huge files, about 18 GB for a 90 minute DV tape. I then edit it with Movie Maker 2 and save out the edited movies as DV-AVI.
I then import the AVIs into Ulead DVD Workshop and let it encode them to MPEG-2 using the VBR setting with MPEG-2 audio. DVD workshop also creates some pretty nice menus too. This creates pretty nice DVD's but it is not quite as good a quality as watching it straight from the DV camera, but I am very pleased with the quality.

I am sure there are capture devices or programs that will capture it better, but how much those cost is beyond me...