How to get the best quality when capturing

[egh01]

Hi,
I guess this subject has been up in this forum lots of times before and I'm sorry for bringing it up again, but I'd like to get this clear.

The thing is I want to capture video and audio from my DV-camera to my PC (windows) through a IEEE 1394 interface. What (file-)format should I capture to, to get the lest qualityloss? File size doesn't matter more than that I only have "ordinary" IDE HDDs, no superspeed SCSIs here. If I want an exact copy of the video from my DV-camera, what format should I use then? How large will the files be in that case, and will my IDE-drives manage to handle that datastream?

Is there any capturing-program that is preferable?

Thanks in advance

[g_shocker182]

Pinnacle Studio 8 is a very popular program that I use to capture, then edit, and produce video. This would be a good choice for your DV capture, as it will detect your videocamera as soon as you plug it in. It'll capture in full DV quality capture. You should be fine with yuor IDE hdd, unless you do extreme video editting/capturing.

[racer-x]

If you capture from a DV-cam to PC via 1394 Firewire, the format will be DV-AVI. Depending on your capture software, it will either be type-1 or type-2. DV-AVI is direct copy of Digital video from your DV-cam with no quality loss. 1 hour of DV = 17 GIGs on your HDD.

If you plan on editing the video and then send it back to camera, keep it in DV-AVI format and you won't loose any quality.

If you plan on making a DVD with it, do all your editing in DV-AVI, then convert to DVD spec mpg-2 format. Then author DVD.

[egh01]

Oh so thats how it works, sorry I have just been working with analog capturing from non-DV devices before. Thanks for informing a newbie. There are two things though, what is this talk about chrominance, e.g. greenscreens filmed with DV-cameras, being better if you capture them through analog capturecards, is that true? Shouldn't chrominance issues be a on-camera-problem if DV-avi is an exact copy? And what is the difference between DV-avi, uncompressed RGB and YUV?

[racer-x]

I don't know about issues with chrominance on a DV source. I have never captured using a green screen. But if you have good video editing software, it should let you adjust chrominance. I have Adobe Premiere and it lets you adjust chrominance for green screen (or any color for that matter).

As for the difference between DV-AVI, uncompressed RGB and YUV. The main diference is compression. Uncompressed RGB has the least (bigest file size). DV-AVI has the most compression (smallest file size). And YUV is somewhere in the middle.

[egh01]

DV-AVI is direct copy of Digital video from your DV-cam with no quality loss.

Uncompressed RGB has the least (bigest file size). DV-AVI has the most compression (smallest file size).

How can it be a direct copy if there is compression involved? And if there is "no quality loss" when I use this compressed format (DV-avi), what would then the pros with using eg. uncompressed RGB be?

[bartman]

The compression for DV is done in-camera so there is nothing you can do about it. If you really want to you could "encode" the dv-avi to an uncompressed format and only re-encode to dv-avi after doing all your edits and such, but this would be a waste of time if all you want to do is do some cuts and send it back to tape. Also, at 17GB per hour you are getting around 8 - 9 times better quality than DVD as far as loss due to compression is concerned.

With DV, it IS comnpressed and you WILL get quality loss however, for the most part, the loss will go unnoticed and editing from DV source and re-encoding to DV once shouldn't harm the quality.

[egh01]

Ok thanks Bartdude and you other guys to.

If someone how has played around with blue-/greenscreen and DV-cameras happens to read this, I could really use some advice. A PM would be nice

[Will Hay]

If someone how has played around with blue-/greenscreen and DV-cameras happens to read this, I could really use some advice. A PM would be nice

A PM wouldn't help the rest of us, would it?

Is there any capturing-program that is preferable?

I find Pinnacle Studio 8(.5) an absolute ease and for me it produces excellent dvd's, although I only use it to capture and edit.
I encode with the superb TMPGEnc and author with Ulead Movie Factory.
Will