what's the best format when capturing...

[mufasa005]

Hi all...

I am new to the DV field.

What will be the best format when capturing from DV tape in order to preserve the best video quiality (as master copy): .avi?

Thanks in advance.


mufasa

[redwudz]

If it's DV, you can only 'transfer' the file in DV format.

From that point you can encode it to anything you want.

EDIT: I use the Panasonic DV codec, then I can run the video through VirtualDub for rough editing and filtering. From there you can frameserve to TMPGEnc or other encoders for MPEG-2 conversion. This saves HD space.

If you only have a 10GB HD, you need a lot more. DV is about 13GB/hour.

[thecoalman]

If it's DV, you can only 'transfer' the file in DV format.

To add to that when you tansfer as DV your going to do it over firewire. You do have two choices though Type 1 or Type 2. The difference between the two is how the audio is stored and type 2 creates a slightly larger file, there's no difference in quality. Which to choose depends on your software, most software will accept both. Other software one or the other.

As Red suggested you'll need a larger drive.

[GeorgeW]

If it's DV, you can only 'transfer' the file in DV format.

To add to that when you tansfer as DV your going to do it over firewire. You do have two choices though Type 1 or Type 2. The difference between the two is how the audio is stored and type 2 creates a slightly larger file, there's no difference in quality. Which to choose depends on your software, most software will accept both. Other software one or the other.

As Red suggested you'll need a larger drive.

There might be a slight difference in quality depending on the user's setup and captured video length. Some folks experience audio-video sync issues with Type-2, as this is not a true "transfer" because the audio is extracted and re-written to the captured dv .avi file. The longer the capture, the more chances of the sync drift. So depending on your setup, you might see an out-of-sync problem with your longer captures.

And because Type-2 captures require slightly more cpu (due to the audio handling), a computer that is "borderline optimized" might experience dropped frames with Type-2 while experiencing no dropped frames with Type-1.

[gadgetguy]

I would recommend WinDV to "capture" your video files. It's small, free, doesn't require alot of overhead, and employs a buffer to limit dropped frames. I can usually surf the net while capturing with no loss of frames.
And I'll echo what Redwudz said. You need a lot more hard drive space.