Really need your advice/help

[SnoopX]

Hi All,

I have searched for this info on the forums already, but am still a little unsure.

What I want to achieve:
I have a few tapes on my Sony DV Recorder and I want to transfer them onto DVDr.

My system specs:
PIII 800EB
512Mb SDRAM
TV2000 XP Deluxe
Pioneer A05 DVD-RW
WinXP

Software I have:
Ulead MovieFactory 2
Ulead VideoStudio 7
TMPEGEnc
CCE
and a few other encoding apps

With my current system specs, I get a lot of "jerky" frames when I try to capture to Full DVD PAL resolution. Will upgrading to an Athlon 2400 and say 1Gb of DDR-RAM help that?

Secondly I am constantly reading of people capturing their vids to an *.avi then using say TMPEGEnc or CCE to convert to a DVD compliant file, then authoring with their fav software. Is this really the best method? I realise I could do this with my current system specs, but it will take heaps of time. I have created (S)VCD's from avi files using TMPGEnc, and it takes a long time, I could imagine trying to convert to DVD format

I look forward to reading your replies, cheers!

[mkelley]

When you say you get a lot of jerky frames, I assume you mean using this TV2000 device, right? Because using firewire capture with your system (assuming your disk drive isn't overly fragmented and has plenty of space) you shouldn't be dropping any frames at all.

Capturing direct to MPEG (as, once again, I assume you're trying to do) isn't very good unless you have a high end hardware encoder. That's why most people capture to AVI and use software encoding. TMPGEnc is about the slowest encoder around, and your system specs aren't too good either (in terms of CPU -- that's what's important in software encoding). Upgrading to MainConcept or CCE will make things go a lot faster, as would a faster computer.

The other good reason not to capture to MPEG is you shouldn't be editing an MPEG file -- so if you need to do any edits at all you really need to capture your DV direct.

My advice would be to get a firewire card and capture to AVI (there are several great free programs out there to do this) and convert using a better encoder. If it's still too slow for you, consider upgrading your computer.