Is there a way to combine steps 1 & 2?

[dagger]

Got some new toys, been doing some reading and researching, but could use some advice/help.

I've learned enough of the basics to understand that the process of creating a VCD essentially involves
1- video capture onto PC
2- encoding (in my case VCD's)
3- VCD burning

I have a JVC MiniDV camcoder, a fast Athlon PC with firewire, and I'm playing with these apps: Ulead VideoStudio, Nero 5.5, and of course TMPGEnc 2.5. I've successfully burned two VCD's that work on my DVD player (yeah!!). But it's a long process, and I'm looking for some optimizations.

My basic question in there must be a way to combine steps 1 & 2 above. When I connect my DVCamcoder, it's a visible device (I'm running WinXP Pro). However, when I browse to the DV device from within TMPGEnc, I can go to the DV camera but it doesn't recognize the DV file (on tape) in the camcoder so I can't directly encode it to my harddrive. This causes me to use Ulead to capture, and I'm of the opinion it's not the best HMI design, but I stumble through it now and then. Can anybody show me the way (if it's even possible)?

Thanx much in advance,
dagger

PS. The video quality of the VCD is only OK. I tried playing with SVCD, but ran into need for MPEG2 encoders and conflicting info on whether I can get a 1 hour DV tape onto an 80min CD, not absolutely sure my new Panasonic RP82 will play SVCD, etc. Is it worth further persuit?

[curritch]

Dagger. There are some authoring and burning programs that capture directly to mpg format in near real time from miniDV. Sonic MyDVD for one and Pinnacle Studio8 for another. To do so, though, they apparenltly use a low quality. fast mpg process so the final video quality may be suspect.
I haven't actually tried it so I don't whether the output would be acceptable or not.

[Mirror_Image]

Some Ulead software will capture DV input straight to MPEG (as will some other software titles):

"-Capture video from DV, D8, and Hi8 camcorders

-Grab DVD-ready video with MPEG-Direct™ capture"

Try the trial version and see what you think.

http://www.ulead.com/vs/runme.htm

[dagger]

Thanx curritch and MirrorImage. I've read at least one other post that indicated the app they tried that let them go directly to a vcd format was low quality. OK - for now, lets assume I can't get/do a quality direct from miniDV to VCD file capture. I've got 2 capture apps that seem to work: Ulead VideoStudio and WinXP. (Note that I downloaded VirtualDub and it won't let me set up the video options/gives error when I select AVI capture. Haven't debugged this app yet!). My objective is to get the best quality VCD from my 1 hour long DV tapes. It looks like XVCD's work on my Panasonic, so it appears I should use TMPGEnc to encode the captured DV file. Do you agree this would give me the best VCD's?

Now, I have lots of capture compression options/file formats with both Ulead and Windows Media Player (WMP). Should I choose the highest quality (an .avi file type that leaves a 7 to 8 GIG file behind), or something closer to what a VCD will use? I'm concerned about the back to back encodings - that usually means significant impacts on quality, at least it does in the digital voice vocoding world.

Then, I can either use TMPGEnc to encode again to a VCD format, and then use Nero5.5 to parse/burn. Or, it looks like Nero5.5 will do the VCD format encoding and burn in one combined step.

I'm getting a little lost here with all the multiple paths and options.

Thanx again for the help!
dagger