Is this a sane approach to Video Editing?

[kiwibokke]

I'm brand new to this whole video editing game, and thanks to vcdhelp and this forum have already climbed quite a way up this new learning curve.

Essentially, I am wanting to transfer all my video footage from old (but good quality) VHS tapes, as well as new digital video from my camcorder to CD in SVCD format.

What I'd like to know is whether my approach is sane:

My gizmos
1) a Sony TRV20 digital camcorder capable of accepting/converting input analogue signals
2) a 1394 Firewire PC Capture Card to transmit video to my laptop
3) (considering) Video Studio 6 to capture and edit video from the camcorder
4) an external CD writer and Nero 5.5 CD-burning software

My intended approach
1) capture VHS footage to miniDV tape using the camcorder
2) use Video Studio 6 to capture the video from miniDV to laptop hard drive
3) use Video Studio 6 to edit, trim, add transitions, etc to the captured video
4) use TMPGEnc to convert projects to MPEG2 format
5) use Nero 5.5 to author and burn to CD in SVCD format

Questions
1) Video Studio 6 can apparently capture in MPEG2 format. Is this advisable, or should I capture in AVI?
2) When removing unwanted scenes from a clip, will Video Studio 6 save the modified clip and thereby reduce the overall size of the production?
3) Should I use Video Studio 6 to convert to MPEG2, or TMPGEnc? (I understand that TMPGEnc is better at this)
4) If converting using TMPGEnc, will Video Studio 6 output files (including transitions, effects, etc) that can be accepted as input by TMPGEnc?
5) I understand that my OS (Win98) has a 4G filesize limit. Can I simply create several .mpg files (as seperate projects in Video Studio 6) and use Nero 5.5 to burn them to CD? Will they burn seamlessly?

My Firewire PC Card came bundled with VideoWave III software, which I found quite limiting and is also not much recommended on this forum. I've downloaded the freeware MovieXone software but it didn't have many transitions to play around with (which is what I'd probably use most), and also froze my PC at random. This site mentions that DV capture with Pinnacle software requires a Pinnacle firewire card, which is why I settled on Video Studio 6, which seems to best suit my requirements.

Thanks in advance to anyone who will take the time to answer some (all ) of these questions. I had no idea that Video Editing was such an involved process, and based on my browsing on these forums it often appears to be a case of different strokes for different folks

Thanks

[presto]

I am not an expert but I have been learning by trial and error and by visiting this site often. Here are my thoughts on your questions.

>1) Video Studio 6 can apparently capture in MPEG2 format. Is this advisable, or should I capture in AVI?<

Capturing in anything but avi will result in much quality loss. Studio 6 or Tmpgenc will have to reencode the mpg for CD and that will result in severe loss. Try to capture in AVI using a lossless codec (huffyuv for example).

>2) When removing unwanted scenes from a clip, will Video Studio 6 save the modified clip and thereby reduce the overall size of the production?<

I have used studio 7 and 8. After you edit they will create a new file but they will not change the original file.

>3) Should I use Video Studio 6 to convert to MPEG2, or TMPGEnc? (I understand that TMPGEnc is better at this)<

TMPGEnc does a better job if quality is the issue. Studio 7 or 8 (don't no about 6) offer ease of editing.


>4) If converting using TMPGEnc, will Video Studio 6 output files (including transitions, effects, etc) that can be accepted as input by TMPGEnc? <

I suppose you could edit and add transitions and the output from Studio as AVI then encode with TMPGEnc. That would require a lot of Hard Drive Space.


5) I understand that my OS (Win98) has a 4G filesize limit. Can I simply create several .mpg files (as seperate projects in Video Studio 6) and use Nero 5.5 to burn them to CD? Will they burn seamlessly?

I have burned several SVCD's with Nero where I used seperate mpgs. The video did not play seemlessly but the join was not bad and would be acceptable if the video had a scene change at that point. Each mpg shows up as it's own chapter in the menu.

If you like Studio 6 you might want to wait a bit and see if the next beta of Studio 8 solves some of it's problems. If they fix a few bugs it will be a real time saver and will result in CD's with great menus.