Converting .DV Files

[skatemore50]

I used to have a MINI DV camcorder, and i used Sony Movie Shaker software on my 2001 VAIO computer to "capture" clips from my camera, and i have them all saved as .DV files. I want them to be in MPEG1 so I can use them with a different video editor. The converters/encoders I have downloaded recently don't seem to work for the purpose I want them to.

I always thought .dv was a file type, and .avi was another file type, but recently i have seen them together as DV AVI, and i don't understand this.

Can anybody give me some advice, or reccomend a program that will do what i want it to do?

Thanks.

[guns1inger]

AVI is a container for audio and video. How the video and audio is stored is determined by the codec. DV is one such codec. Chances are your .DV file is either raw DV, or an AVI file that uses the DV codec, renamed as DV.

Before converting to mpeg1, what editor are you trying to use ? I ask because DV is a format actually designed for editing. It is simple to use, and preserves quality fairly well. Mpeg1 and 2 (and 4) are designed for maximum compression for end-user viewing, and are very poor formats to edit, and quickly lose quality if they need to be re-encoded.

First thing is to identify what you have in your .DV file. Open it with G-Spot 2.6x or AviCodec and see what they say.

After that, and assuming it is actually a DV avi file, the demo of tmpgenc plus will encode Meg one indefinitely.

[skatemore50]

Well, i bought pinnacle studio 10 plus, and i used it for a while, and the clips worked fine on there, but i got fed up with the program and now i'm just trying to edit with windows movie maker.

I downloaded G-Spot and it says my files are "Raw DV - IEC 61834

Is there any way to edit raw DV in windows movie maker? because I get this error message when trying to import a file into Windows Movie Maker:

"The file D:\MovieShaker\Matt K\matt 7 stair long and foster.dv is not a supported file type, and it cannot be imported into Windows Movie Maker."


I would also appreciate it if anyone knew of a better editor for download that will accept my files?

I will try the converter you reccomended, guns1inger.

Thanks!

[redwudz]

For just simple editing, I use VirtualDub Mod and the Panasonic DV Codec. It will allow output in DV format or will frameserve directly to an encoder like TMPGEnc and eliminate the in-between edited file to save time and hard drive space.

[edDV]

As bad as Studio 10 may be, it should allow export as a DV-AVI file. That is it should wrap your DV in an AVI container on export.