Steps To Take

[pbmc59]

Hello,
I'm trying to get two 1 hour D8 tapes onto a standard DVD+R.
With the help of people in this forum, I was able to do it once, and I managed to burn one hour each onto a single DVD with the other two tapes I had.
I'm at the point where I need to ask what steps I need to take to do better.
This is what I have/am going to do:
1-capture from my camcorder using Windows Movie Maker, through the
firewire, uncompressed into an avi file.
2-encode just the video using TMPGenc.
3-extract the asf portion with an early version of Virtualdub, and convert
to wav or ac3?
4-author this with something, please suggest. I have MyDVD and it
blows up the audio, and re-encodes the TMPGenc file.
5-burn with something that you can suggest.
Thanks to all that have answered me in the past.
Any help will be appreciated.
Thanks

[housepig]

For authoring, I use DVD Lab - maybe a little intimidating to the new user, but the help file is decent, there are plenty of users on these forums, and once you get the basics down it's really easy. Very deep and capable of doing very sophisticated stuff, but still easy to do basic discs.

And it won't reencode your files (it can't... no encoder) or reinflate your audio.

For burning, I use Nero, I know other people have problems with it but I find it a great program, and the only coasters I've burnt with it have been my fault, not Nero's.

I would also suggest that you get a few rewriteable discs, that way you can test discs and different authoring styles without wasting discs.

[pbmc59]

...thanks housepig, but a couple more questions if you will...
Are the steps I outlined OK? I'm not sure of the sequence...or details of each step.
Should I capture ( have the capacity ) full uncompressed avi with Windows Movie Maker?
Then do I extract the audio with the earlier version of Virtualdub, or after encoding just the video with TMPGenc, or it doesnt matter since the two are working on the same file, only at different times?
Also, since I have many more D8 tapes to process, most likely I will be getting the retail versions of Nero and DVD Lab. Are there specific versions ( lite or full blown ) and pluggins I will need?
See, I have some of the lingo down, and know the tools to use ( from viewing many appends here ) , it's just I'm not sure of the steps to take and in what order. There are many good Guides in here, I just need some help with the general outline.
Thanks again, all the help I get here is truly appreciated!
Pat

[bugster]

Hello,
1-capture from my camcorder using Windows Movie Maker, through the
firewire, uncompressed into an avi file.

3-extract the asf portion with an early version of Virtualdub, and convert
to wav or ac3?

5-burn with something that you can suggest.
Thanks to all that have answered me in the past.
Any help will be appreciated.
Thanks

3. what asf portion do you mean here. If you capture DV AVI uncomprssed, you end up with an avi file of about 13Gb for each hour of video. Are you sure you are capturing correctly, as Windows Movie maker defaults to encoding the incoming stream to .asf (or wmv?)

If you are encoding it as you capture, you could be losing a lot of quality.

If you are not encoding it during capture, let TmpGnec encode the audio to mp2 whilst you encode the video, i.e one file for both.

Then author with a package that supports mp2 audio, such as Ulead MF or DVD WS, Dazzle DVD complete, Spruce Up, Maestro, plenty to choose from here.

EDIT, Just read your second post here.

You said:

Should I capture ( have the capacity ) full uncompressed avi with Windows Movie Maker?

YES, Most definatley

[housepig]

well, I capture from analog sources, so I capture with iuVCR, encode the avi to dvd-mpeg in TMPGenc (audio & video), then import that to DVD Lab for authoring.

The key points up till you get to the authoring stage are going to be the balance between having a file that you like the quality, and having a file that will fit on a dvd-r.

So if you're happy with the video quality once you get everything encoded, I would say stay with your method. The only question then is, are the files small enough to fit? This is a function of bitrate - the lower the bitrate, the smaller the file, the more time you can fit on the disc. You need to find the most efficient bitrate to get the highest quality for 2 hours of material.

If you are encoding with CBR (constant bit rate) I would suggest you encode using 2-pass VBR (variable bit rate) - it takes significantly longer to encode, but the analysis will allow the encoder to allocate less bitrate to more static scenes, and more bitrate to more active & dynamic scenes, thereby increasing the overall quality in the same file size.

I wouldn't capture totally uncompressed, unless you have a huge amount of file space available to you - I capture with the Huffyuv codec, which is minimal compression, and that's about 26Gb per hour. Looks great.

As far as which versions, DVD Lab is in version 1.1, with some newer yet not quite stable beta versions out. It's available from www.mediachance.com as a free 30-day trial download. Nero is also available that way, I would download the newest version from www.nero.com

But most any burning software should work - once you're finished with the authoring in DVD Lab, Nero doesn't need to reencode or reprocess anything, it just burns the files that DVD Lab will output.

hope this helps.

[bugster]

I wouldn't capture totally uncompressed, unless you have a huge amount of file space available to you - I capture with the Huffyuv codec, which is minimal compression, and that's about 26Gb per hour. Looks great.

hope this helps.

He is 'capturing' DV. In Windows Movie Maker, set the capture setting to 'Other'. A new drop list will appear. Select DV-AVI (25Mps). This will take the raw DV data from the camera and produce an AVI of about 13Gig/hour. As this is a bit for bit copy of what is on the tape, you won't get it any better.

[housepig]

He is 'capturing' DV.

d'oh! forgot that.

[pbmc59]

Hello,
It's been a few weeks, but I just got a chance to try again.
I tried "capturing" in Windows Movie Maker II using DV-AVI setting, which is 720x480 at 25.0Mbps.
I should have ended up with a raw file that is over 10GB, but I ended up with about 5.3GB.
I checked the tape and there is an hour of D8 there. It's all on the captured file, however, both the audio and video is choppy and the file is almost half the expected size.
File properties are as follows:
File type: video w/ audio
bit rate: 29,795kbps
size: 5.37GB

Video
width: 720
height: 480
bit rate: 28,771kbps
frame rate: 29.97fps

Audio
bitrate: 1024kbps
channels: 2
sample rate: 32kHz ( should be 44.1?)
sample size: 16

I've captured like this early on ( when I knew even less ) and the file size was around 12GB and not choppy.
What appears to be wrong?
Any help will be much appreciated.