Should you capture video in DV-AVI or just in DVD?

[David9799]

Should you capture video in DV-AVI or just in DVD quality? I'm not sure what the differance in the two are ones just not compressed? I just know DVD quality has a smaller file size compared to DV-AVI.

Whats the advantage or disadvantage to editing one or the other? Editing DV-AVI i haven't had any audio sync trouble but when i'm done i have to convert it to DVD.

[bugster]

DV-avi is a format that was designed to be edited. Mpeg is not.

If all you want to do is simple cut and splice stuff, you can use mpeg, though the choice of tools that are useful for this is much smaller than with DV-avi. Anything more complex and I would recomend sticking with DV.


Also, if you capture to DV-avi, you can the encode to mpeg without the constraint of realtime encoding. Multi-pass encoding becomes possible and you get much better control over your encoder settings so leading to the possibility of higher quality final results.

[Capmaster]

Should you capture video in DV-AVI or just in DVD quality? I'm not sure what the differance in the two are ones just not compressed? I just know DVD quality has a smaller file size compared to DV-AVI.

Whats the advantage or disadvantage to editing one or the other? Editing DV-AVI i haven't had any audio sync trouble but when i'm done i have to convert it to DVD.

Both are compressed, but MPEG2 (DVD) is compressed much more.

AVI generally edits more cleanly than MPEG2, which is more a "finished product" format. However, it can be done by using a frame-accurate editor.

DV takes much more hard disk space and it also requires the additional step of encoding into MPEG2 before you can author the files for burning. DV offers a quality advantage, however.

MPEG2 capturing using a hardware encoder is probably the easiest way to grab video for authoring if you're not planning on heavy editing, and the hardware capture cards are inexpensive.