Capture from 1394 to MPEG-2

[poshanchang]

I'm trying to capture DV from SONY PC101 to MPEG-2 thru 1394.

Here is my hardware spec

Intel Celelon 900MHz
256MB RAM
80GB HD
NVIDA GeForce 2 MX/MX 400 Video Card

Software used:
Ulead MediaStudio (to AVI)
Pixexa ImageMixer (only to MPEG-1)
VirtualDub
TMPGEnc

I did the tuning of my hard disk DMA and verious computer tunnings from http://www.vcdhelp.com and walk thru http://www.vcdhelp.com/capture for anything I can do, but I still do not get satisfied quality of the video yet.

I saw that there are many hardware compression cards, but hardly see any from 1394 to MPEG-2 and they are so expensive. I am willing to spend another $80 US dollars this video capturing project.

Pls advise if there any suggestion to help me to make my video better.
Thanks so much.

[donpedro]

Capture DV AVI and then convert to MPEG2.

[Nelson37]

DITTO.

The advantage of software compression is the ability to do multiple passes, and to do it in more than real-time.

[poshanchang]

I understand that I need to capture to AVI and to MPEG-2.
I used

·VirtualDub
·TMPGenc

as suggested in

High Quality Capturing with Little Frame Loss in VirtualDub
http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/userguides/89899.php

but, I still do not get good quality of the MPEG-2.

What could be the problem with my hardware spec?
What if I do not see good AVI? What could be the problem?

Thanks so much.

Po-Shan.

[donpedro]

What do you mean by "I do not see good AVI" ? If avi is not good, MPEG conversion is not gonna fix it. Oposit is true, it will get worst. You are compressing data. Well you can turn on some filters or something but then you will loose sharpness. Or I am totaly wrong and somebody correct me.

[poshanchang]

I thought AVI should have the full frame from DV (no compression), but I am still seeing not clear quality images from the video.

How to capture good AVI from 1394 DV might be a better way to describe the problem?

Thanks a lot.

Po-Shan.

[donpedro]

DV is compressed format that is written to tape when you soot with camcorder. Then capture by FireWire should be lossless. Problems can occure if you PC is not fast enough (HD or RAM or CPU) and it can't handle som much information so fast.

Now... I use Pinnacle Studio 8 (7 before that) and I can't complain about AVI files.

I never did this and never saw anybody doinig it, but there is Windows Movie Maker that comes with WinXP..... who knows what it can do.

[poshanchang]

Yes, I know that Pinnacle is a great product, but I'm a student and just do not have enough money to busy such hardware compression cards.

You have never done this? Am I doing wrong? So, how do you go from DV 1394 to MPEG-2? Any cheaper, but good solutions?

Thanks so much.

Po-Shan.

[jcuervo811]

Try using Ulead Video Studio. I captured uncompressed AVI from my Sony TRV-320 video camera via 1394 to my P-III 500 using Ulead Video Studio 5 and the picture was excellent. From there I used Tmpeg to compress to MPEG2/DVD standard.

JCuervo811

[donpedro]

Pinnacle Sytems have a lot of different products. Studio 8 is just a sofware that can be bought from $19.99 (couple of weeks on sale in Best Buy with Mail In Rebate) to $120 or smoewhere between that.

There are lots of ways how to go from DV on tape to mpeg2.

Here is my..

Pinnacle Studio 8 and DV home video editing

[poshanchang]

Excellent resource ...
Thanks a lot.
Po-Shan.