DVCPRO Source Encoding to DVD MPEG-2

[jrewingii]

I'm having my wedding shot in DVCPRO by a videographer... I would ideally like to edit the original footage myself and then author DVDs, but it's too expensive right now.

So, my question is, if I have the videographer encode the unedited DVCPRO tapes to DVD MPEG-2 (followed by burning the DVDs) for me, should I have him encode at a particular rate? I would assume 720x480, 29.97fps for NTSC, but should I insist on 6Mbps? 9Mbps?

My goal is to ensure the highest quality transfer from DVCPRO masters to DVD (approx. 10 hours of footage) so that I can later edit those DVD's to 6 hours of footage that I can re-burn to about 3 2 hour DVDs. Will I be able to do this, or should I purchase the DVCPRO master tapes from him and wait till prices really drop and hope somebody will rent me a DVCPRO player for real cheap that I can use to capture to my PC from?

Am I being too obsessive about the quality? Is there a reasonable alternative (ie, transfering them to DV/miniDV tape, etc.)?

thanks in advance,

JR

[jrewingii]

oh ya.. one other thing..

if I DO go with the DVDs, will I be able to edit them in Premiere without having to spend a lot of time demuxing/remuxing/etc., or is that a whole other issue?

JR

[jrewingii]

I've gotten some advice elsewhere to possibly transfer the DVCPRO tapes to MiniDV.

What's the opinion here?