Poor contrast on still photos on SVCD?? Captured from DV!

[wad2k]

Hi,
My ultimate goal is capture still images off video that has been recorded with my Sony DV camera and put these still images on DVD. The original video that was shot is actually from a 3CCD VIDEO Camera(not camcorder) and recorded onto DV tape via the S-Video Input on my DV camera. This recorded video is of X-ray films. The 3ccd camera is pointing down at the x-ray(camera on a stick) and the xray is obviousley not moving so essentially I am shooting still objects.
When I play this video(from the DV tape) back on a TV(S-video) the image looks great. Even when I press pause it looks just as good. Now I want these images on DVD but I want as close to the same quality as the origianl DV tape.
I used Video2Photo to capture stills off the DV tape. What I did was pause the DV tape and simply capture the frame using that program. I set it to the highest quality JPG. When I opened the JPG's with my viewer, I was very impressed with the quality. I didnt buy the DVD recorder yet but I wanted to test the image quality of the JPGs so I burnded a SVCD using VCDeasy. The SVCD played fine in my DVD player hooked up to the TV but the contrast was bad. The whites with some grey were blooming and and the dark areas that had some grey on the orginal film and JPGs were too dark or black. I didnt see any problem with the resolution, just the contrast.
Since the JPG's looked good on the computer, I am assuming that the poor contrast is coming from the JPG to Mpeg conversion or after that.

Here is where I need some help!
I have no experience with burning DVD's.
Will I get better image quality if I put these Jpgs onto DVD rather than SVCD. And by "better image quality", in my application, I mean better contrast????

The xrays I am shooting are chest films and I need to see all the shades of grey. As I mentioned before, they do look good on the captured jpgs but I need help after that!!!!
Thanks for your time and I hope someone can help shed some light on this

[BJ_M]

tmpgenc is really good for this ..

but first -- instead of jpegs - you may want to use a a codec speccially developed just for xrays ...

but backing up further -- doesnt mater if 3ccd , if you are sending via s-video to DV (compressed) and clamped .. better to send directly to PC via capture hard ware (frame capture hardware would be the best) ..

there is a whole industry just for medical imaging ... see here for some info (just one of many companies) http://www.pegasusimaging.com/medical.htm

you will want to capture in 16 bit greyscale ...

but -- going back to tmpgenc ... go to adv settings and use custom color correction and YUV , remove all saturation (-255) , add extend to 0-255 range , you can play around with more settings there .. and see the results ..

render to GOP IPPPPPPPPPPPPP (15) , close all GOPS , scene detection on , CGI matrix and high bit rate (CBR) of 8500 and do dvd instead of svcd ..

at the least - capture in targas (which tmpgec can read directly) ... but 16 bit greyscale wavelet JPEG2000 is the way to go ..