Which program + Resolution for Mini-DV to DVD

[PappaDj]

I need some basic help. I have about 6 mini-DV tapes. Mostly these are home recordings on them but no weddings or anything that I'm going to want to keep the masters... however I want to capture them on DVD with minimal loss of quality but I would like to keep each DVD to either 30 minutes each for more important film and 1 hour each for less important but I'll leave it to the masters here to suggest what needs to be done.

1) What program should I use?
2) What is the best resolution/codec should I rip with?
3) Can I burn them in DVD-Movie format and keep the quality to edit later or should I burn as data?

I used the latest MovieMaker from MS and I got 10GB for 50 minutes in AVI, 25Mbps, 720x480, 30fps, NTFS. It came out pretty good. No noticeable dropped frames but I'm willing to purchase other programs if it will make the job better/easier and will work for more advanced captures later.

Thanks for the help everyone.

[PappaDj]

I'm still reading and researching this question. I have read that you can sorta copy the file on the dv cam as opposed to standard capturing. This would be cool but I don't know what program to use. Someone said that Premiere 6.5 has an option to transfer the file on the dv tape directly to the computer. Is this possible?

[racer-x]

Any video editor should let you capture from your DV-Cam. Since you're a beginner, I'll recomend Ulead Video Studio 7. It will let you do everything you're asking including DVD creation.

You'll need a 1394 firewire card on your PC. Esentualy you're just transfering data from camcorder to PC with no quality loss. Mini DV has only one resolution, 720 x 480 (NTSC).

If you want to edit, do it in the DV-AVI format. If you want to make a DVD, you'll have to convert that AVI to a DVD-spec MPEG-2.

[nooner6]

Go with Premiere 6.5 if you can. You don't rip mini-DV files. You transfer them to your computer and use Premiere to do the editing. Set you frame rate to 29.97fps instead of 30fps. This is for NTSC. I think 30fps is PAL or movie format. It may look ok on your computer but when you try to view it on your TV, you may have a problem. You may want to do the editing now and burn it on a DVD as you final video and keep you mini-DV as master source. It would be too big for you to burn your video as source and edit later as they would be in avi format. If you encode them in any form, you loose quality of the original video. Just my 2 cents.

[bugster]

If you are using MS Moviemaker already for 'capturing' the DV, as long as it is set to capture the full DV data (25Mbps as you said), then that is fine for that stage. Next you will have to convert to DVD compliant mpeg-2. Take a look here: https://www.videohelp.com/tmpgencdvd.htm for help with that.

Next stage is author and burn. Take a look at the 'AUTHOR' link on the left of the page for help with that. There rea many good authoring apps available these days, it all depends on what you want to do and how much you want pay! Many authoring apps include the ability to burn the DVD.

[amichael]

I've basically done what pappaDJ is trying to do.

I have followed the instructions to produce a HQ DVD from my Sony TR33 camera and I have go to say that the results between TMPGENC and using Ulead's MF 2 is negligable. The results are being viewed on a 36" TV and there is really not much quality difference between them.

I used 8000 Kb/s CBR on Ulead. It's a lot more straight foward and I cannot see the extra effort put into TMPGENC worth it.