Converting DV to DVD quality...

[Optical]

Whenever I try to convert DV to DVD (MPEG2) it looks a great deal worse than the original DV, even if I have the bitrate way up. Is it because DV is 640x480 and it has to shrink the resolution?

[heyjjjaded]

What software are you using?

[lenti_75]

probably is the soft or the codec....

[Optical]

TMPGEnc, after using Windows Movie Maker to extract the DV to DV-AVI.

[sitlet]

dv avi should be 720x540 with ntsc. maybe windows movie maker isnt capturing it right. i personally never use that crappy windows program. if you want something for free, try DVIO. i use it a lot and it works great

[ronnylov]

dv avi should be 720x540 with ntsc. maybe windows movie maker isnt capturing it right. i personally never use that crappy windows program. if you want something for free, try DVIO. i use it a lot and it works great

DV avi is 720x480 with NTSC and 720x576 with PAL. You can use the same resolution on DVD, no resizing is required. You can try Mainconcept MPEG Encoder or Canopus Procder instead of TMPGEnc but the differencies are not big at high DVD bitrates. Maybe Moviemaker does some reencoding which lowers the quality? The resolution should not be 640x480. Try DVIO as suggested above and you may also need a DV codec like Panasonic DV codec or Canopus DV codec.

[Optical]

Are there any other good DV capture programs? I just used DVIO and it still captures at 640x480. Is the windows codec messing it up?


Update:

Ok i just used Ulead Video Studio 5, which came with the firewire cable and it says it captures to 720x480, and when I look at the properties in the program it says that. When I play it back with WMP it says 640x480. Is WMP reporting it wrong? It must be because VirtualDub reports it at 720x480.

[nufdude]

WMP has a setting at which rate it should play DV.
I think by default depending on the Graphics hardware support, it picks optimzed support. Since my graphics card has no hardware support. so it is optimized for 50% only.

I would say check ur setting on the WMP.

[MpegEncoder]

Just a little reminder:

The effecitve bitrate of DV (from your camcorder) is about 25 Mbps, whereas even the maximum DVD bitrate is around 8-9 Mbps. So don't expect a miracle.