Running XP with NTFS drives, One P4 machine and one older P3 machine, both with firewire ports. I do a lot of Xbox and other movie DVD backups and have a Phillips a05 burner, as well as my machines are networked. My camera is a Sony TRV33 and I use firewire to bring the data in.

I basically just want to transfer the mini-dv tapes to DVD and then burn a DVD. What is the easest way to do this, without much/little quality loss?

Also in the future (have not done this yet) , I am going to use the camera as a pass-thru devise to bring in my older 8mm tapes so I can then burn them to DVD also.

I have been screwing around with Ulead’s product Movie Studio, but it does not seem to work well for me. In Ulead, I have been using the DVD capture format, but it stops every 20 min or so and then has to render the frames. The real issue is that once in a while it drops entire sections 20min sections. If I use the DV capture format it seems to work ok, but it takes forever to then convert to DVD?

What format should I use to capture? OR is there a better way (i.e. program) to use for video capture.

Also, if possible I want to use my older P3 machine to capture (it also has firewire) and then I can transfer the files to my P4 for rendering as well as that is where my dvd burner is at.

thanks