PLEASE HELP - Basic DV Capture Question...

[trihorn]

Hi all... I have a problem, and in spite of looking through the forum for any answers, I still haven't found any... so here goes:

I have a Sony DCR-TRV20e connected with a firewire cable to my soundblaster audigy card... I use Adobe Premiere 6.0 to capture my vid to PC. Since I want to capture in the best quality I can, I use the DVPal settings...

Everything goes fine, but as expected, the file size is huge... now for my problem...

I want to store the movies I capture on a CD, preferably in DiVX (or if anyone knows of a better compression/quality codec, please feel free to comment).

I have tried almost everything I've read here... TMPGenc, Virtualdub, etc.. but none of them will read the avi's, since the DV-Avi format seems to be unuseable for them as they require an MS-Avi format.

So the question is rather simple:
How do I transfer a movie from my DVCam onto a CD, in the best possible quality/compression ratio?

ANY (!) help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks a bunch,
TriHorn

[vhelp]

trihorn,

i'm not fimilior with the audigy firewire card setup, but as far as divX
being played on your dvd player, will not work since dvd players does
not support divX thus far.
Unless, you mean to burn your divX files on cd and then play
them through your pc's cd-rom drive and watch on your pc monitor.
That should/will work.

So, in anycase, . . . you asked:
>> So the question is rather simple:
>> How do I transfer a movie from my DVCam onto a CD, in the best
>> possible quality/compression ratio?

You have to ask yourself this question:
* Is you goal to view on your dvd player, hence you need to decide
on vcd or svcd
* is your goal to watch on your pc monitor, hence, divX codec/format.

As far as any other apps reading/frameserving your DV avi footage, you
need to D/L a codec such as "Main concepts" and then install it,
reboot, and then restart vdub or tmpg, and they should now be able to
read it, hence you can now encode to whatever format your heart so
desires, ie divX, vcd, svcd, etc.
Sorry, I don't remember the link to main concepts codec D/L, but it
is a free/trial version, and will put a logo on top left of your video,
should you encode BACK to main concepts DV codec format, else if not,
then you wont see the logo during things like frameserving, etc.

I do a lot of (small) DV transfers, but I've ben forgoing the firewire
route cause its a bit time consuming, and has some long pauses before
each transfer to harddrive.
Instead, I hook up my ati-tv wonder (ATW) card to the DV cam via s-video
and use AVI_IO to capture. So far, my results are excellent to say the
least, he, he...!!

I'm in the process of upgrading my 2nd pc to do ONLY encoding, but i've
not made up my mind on weather or not i want to add "capturing" or
"firewiring" to this setup. So, in time, I will feel my way and sooner
or later, will come to a decision. But for now, it's either DV firewire
or analog capture on my main pc, he, he....

Hope that's ben helpful
and good luck.

-vhelp

[trihorn]

Thanks a lot Vhelp... I'll go out to look for the Main concepts codec...

but to clear one thing up... I don't as much intend to watch the video, I mostly want to preserve it... I have a lot of footage that is very valuable (to me at least), and all I want to do, is get it off the old vhsc/vhs tapes and onto a cd...

the only way to do that (for me, since I don't have a capture card or any other card with a tv-in) is to digitize it through my dvcam and record it to my pc.

But once again, thanks for your help.

TriHorn

[trihorn]

Once again, Vhelp... Thanks a million... I've downloaded the codec and I'm off... works brilliantly!

TriHorn