Analog -> DV -> DVD = Disappointing

[mjohn1999]

Hello all, I have just purchased my Pioneer A04 drive to convert some Analog VHS/Digital8 media to DVD.

On my first attempt, I captured a VHS home movie to DV using a SONY VCR to the inputs of my SONY TRV730 camcorder which fed the feed into my computer using Firewire.

I captured the video with Premiere 6.0 and saved it as the highest quality DV AVI I could.

There was one problem when I was able to burn it to DVD. The video was pixilated and quite bad quality.

My question is, where did I go wrong? Is the Camcorder incapable of converting Analog to DV at a good quality? If so I can purchase a SONY DA1 or Dazzle Bridge, but since the camcorder does the same thing, I thought I would skip the middle man.

Or perhaps theres a set way to capture from DV for optimum quality? A certain program to use?

To burn this DVD, I used Nero 5.5.8.2.

One thing that does puzzle me, using the same DV AVI file, I outputted the movie from my Matrox card back to VCR and it didnt look as bad as the DVD. Still not super high quality, but borderline acceptable.

So, I think I have a problem in my encoding, and possibly some signal loss in my conversion process.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Thank you!
-mjohn

[resnullius]

i,d say it the compression (when you go from dv avi to mpeg to make the dvd) what program did you use to do the compression? i would recomend frameserving from premiere to tmpgenc or cce. Try a bitrate of 6mps or so.

hope that helps

[tom28]

I don't have problem with my conversion using Sony D8 AV-DV to the computer using Studio 7 capture into DV AVI. Encoding using TMPGENC is great and produce great MPG2. I convert 2hrs movies, using tmpgenc 2 pass VBR, avg at 4.2Mbs, and make sure change the motion search from fast to slow (that is where is blocks come from on high motions), and my mpg2 came out great. Put it into DVD using Nero.

Try to use tmpgenc (motion search slow or very slow) if you can and try not to encode it using Premiere.

[EricB]

mjohn1999

Go back to the beginning. You say you captured the DV in Premiere 6.0, "and saved it as the highest quality DV AVI I could.". There really isn't a quality setting for DV video.

In Premiere you have to be careful that your Save settings are the same as your Import / Edit settings. Otherwise, you may re-encode the DV video.

If the original video you captured and then saved from Premiere doesn't look GREAT, then you may need to look at your save settings.

[Nelson37]

Check quality at each stage, please clarify. Looks like you did the actual MPG2 encoding with Nero, possibly the worst encoder available. Use Tmpgenc or CCE.

You might want to post your bitrate and resolution settings as well.

[mjohn1999]

Thank you everyone for your helpful replies.

Sorry if I left out some details, you have recommended some things that I did not use in my original encoding.

I originally used TMPGEnc to compress the video, however I used default settings. I did not change the motion search precision to slow, (probablly left it on estimate), did not use VBR but instead CBR, and shoot me for this, probablly didnt even change the size to 720 x 480.

I have read about frameserving, and I will use that in the future - just need to read up more on it and get things set up. Premiere and TMPGEnc I have, so it should be pretty easy.

Tom, thanks for posting your settings, and also giving me the confidence that my Sony camcorder can convert Analog-DV for me at a high quality. I did not want to have to go buy more hardware, but would have if needed.

Eric, sorry. I checked my Premiere settings and you are right. DV Capture is all or nothing. I captured this video about a month ago and since HDD space is not a problem I know that I would have chosen as high of a quality as I could. (Although this wasnt the case with TMPGEnc ..

I will though need to check my Premiere save settings, if I look at the original movie (Filmed with a little Sony camcorder - model unknown) I can see hardly noticable flaws in the movie (pixelation?). When I recorded it to PC those became a tad more noticable, and when I copied it to Video for a family member, the problem was less noticable, but slightly more noticable than the original.. (phew!)

All in all, I was happy with the quality on the computer and on the VHS copy. BUT, perhaps I am recording it incorrectly and could even get the quality looking better. I will check that out, thank you!

The DV movie itself is about 20-25 minutes and takes 5gb of space. When I originally encoded the file and then converted it to my VOB's my main VOB size was 750mb. Now that I think of this, the movie *should* in my screwed up logic be around 1gb. The way I figure is that these 4.7GB Discs are recommended for 120 minutes of video. Do a little math and a little dance and 25 minutes of video should be around a gig.. I think.. *grin*

I will re-encode my movie with these settings and reply the results!
Thank you everyone.
-John