DV Cam to Pc, Best Way?

[Squid_uk]

Hey guys, just got hold of some DV from my recent holiday and would like to burn them to DVD mabye making some edititing along the way but will leave that till later, anyway what i am asking is which do you all think is the best way to get the footage on the pc, keeping the quality of the footage but not using too much space?

To stream the footage i am using a Sony Digital 8 TRV265E PAL to play the footage and it is connected to the system by firewire, the software i have avalible at the moment is Windows Movie Maker and Ulead DVD Movie Factory 5.

The tapes run on average for about 2-3hrs each, bar one, when i streamed this one (just over 1hr in length) using Movie Maker, the footage was great quality but the file was just over 12GB, now i did select the 'other setting - DV AVI PAL' option using the wizard,

Just really after some advice as you guys would use please recommend other apps and i could look into them!

[edDV]

So you are using the camcorder in pass-thru mode to get 2-3 hours?

Each hour of DV format takes 13.5 GB of space. You can transfer in segments or all in one shot to 27-36 GB.

I'd recommend you use WinDV to make this transfer. It is easier to use for pass-though and is very reliable.

Next use Ulead DVD Movie Factory to make the DVD.

[edDV]

It's also possible to transfer directly into Movie Factory (use DV format for best quality). If you are doing pass-thrugh you will need to turn off device control.

[tmh]

Before getting to into Windows Movie Maker you should know a few things. First, it captures DV-AVI as "type 1" as opposed to "type 2". If you're completing the project in Movie Maker, no big deal. Most here would say Movie Maker is lousy after the capture phase and to use something else. Unless it has changed, Movie Maker won't make a DVD playable on your settop.

IF captued in Movie Maker, a program such as DVdate can convert to type 2 for use in other programs like ULead. Not a "big" deal, but much easier to capture as Type 2 in the first place. WINDV does a good job of this, as previously mentioned. ULead may also, although WinDV uses MUCh less system resources than most other capture programs (especially complete products like ULead).

If you want good quality, especially for editing, then capture as DV-AVI is a good way to go. It takes that 13+gb per hour though! No getting around that unless you convert the DV to another format "on the fly" which may not produce the video quality you want. "Capture" of DV to the hard drive is really a TRANSFER so it basically exactly the same quality as the original.

The you can edit it. Then encode then author then burn to DVD. ULead likely does all these steps for you, although I don't use it so I'm not sure.

Obviously, if you don't have the harddrive space you'll need a better solution. However, once you've completed each DVD you can just delete the raw capture files and free up the space again. Or, you can just do what I suspect many here do (me included) and have one or two huge hard drives devoted just to video "stuff" ! It sure fills up fast at 13gb/hr of footage!