Digi-cable captured video conversion quality.

[Golem]

I've not burned to DVD (no hardware yet) but am preparing video for future transfer. My questions concern the video captured from digital cable.

1. Is it possible to produce like-quality results (the same seen while originally viewed on TV) when processing for DVD using TMPGnc? Also, shouldn't this NOT require any filtering aside from basic in/out marks & audio fades?
2. I know that my data rate during capture is in the neighborhood of 7.5-8mb/s (VDub/huff/704x480) so would it be wasteful, or help to keep optimal quality if I encode my DVD ready mpegs at 8mb/s? File size is of no concern at this time.
3. Lastly, should I encode to a single MPEG file or choose the option to split streams? I expect to be using high end authoring sowftware (Maestro, etc).

*edit - Guess what I'm really trying to do is get the same quality through all this authoring/processing as I would had I a desktop DVD-recorder attached to my cable tv box! Possible????

Appreciate any and all info.

Regards,
Golem

[Hoang Tran]

If you're going to use Maestro then
1. Encode movies into M2V and WAV. Wave files will need to convert to AC3 (find an AC3 software encoder).
2. Normally M2V bitrates is (ave: 5Mb/s max:9.8Mb/s), AC3 bitrate is 192Kb/s).
3. Prepare files to burn on 4.7GB DVD-R should not exceed 4.37GB in total, including menu graphics/audio/clips etc.. Most likely you're going to use single layer burner anyways.
4. Quality wise, you will loose some due to MPEG-2 encoding. TMPGenc 2-pass VBR will give you fairly good quality but it's time consuming. Get dual processors PC if you can.
5. Learn about maestro menu creation as the process can be troublesome.

[geek rock]

you should be able to get the same quality as a set top DVD recorder.. it's basically just simplifying everything that you can do on a PC.

when you say "split streams" what do you mean? it's best to keep each movie in one file.

if you split up the movie, when it comes to burning then there will probably be a tiny pause between each mpeg file, disrupting your movie's flow.

[Golem]

Thanks guys for the replies!

What I ment by "split streams" was addressed by Hoang Tran. I wasn't sure if the correct method was to use TMPGEnc's option of sliptting the output elementary stream as a combined MPG file or, as Hoang stated, m2v & mp2 (later to be converted to AC3) files.

Now it's time for me to add a new query thread since more questions have arisen!

Thanks!
Golem