Please point me to the right guide

[TheManuel]

I'm just starting to get into this hobby and I'm getting set up hardware-wise. I just bought the AverMedia DVD EZMaker for $0 after rebates in OfficeMax and I'm trying to test it out to see how the resulting video compares with the original. I'm particularly concerned about the colors as they just don't seem right on the PC monitor.
I already captured some AVI's at 720x480x16 compressed with HUFFYUV. There are very few dropped frames.
Anyway, I still don't have a DVD writer so in the meantime, just to test the video capture capability of the card, I would like to burn some five minutes of video into a CD but with DVD quality to test out on my DVD player. DVD is the final format intended for my home videos when I finally put everything together. I intend to use TMPGEnc for that task.
Last year I visited this site quite often (CDRHelp) and I seem to recall there was a guide to do just that (DVD-quality video on CD) but when I started looking at this website again this year, I found such an overwhelming amount of guides that I just can't seem to find it.

Does anyone know about one?

[Tommyknocker]

I think you may also want to look at Video Studio 7 trial version as well. It can make a miniDVD by capturing your video and burning it onto a CD-R(W) as a DVD. It can only last for 10 minutes or so, but it will be DVD quality.

[macleod]

A suggestion for you is to actually cap your source at half d1 (352x480) instead of the full dvd resolution of 720x480. The primary reason is that your tv source doesnt go above 352x480 so arguably, capping above that resolution is a waste of time.

I would check out lordsmurf.com as he has some great guides for doing what you are trying to do (although his reference the ati card line, you should be able to gleen some similarities).

What I have done in the past (I exclusively cap now using the e30, a standalone dvd recorder) is use IUVCR (a free alternative is freevcr) to capture avi (using picvideo MJPEG codec set at 19) and then use dvd2svcd set on the avi setting at 352x480 48mhz audio to make a nonstandard CVD (actually CVD, not VCD misspelled).

The reasons for CVD "non standard" is that 1) it takes advantage of the actual resolution of your video source and is IMO better than SVCD (and much better than vcd) and 2) when you decide to convert it to DVD, ALL you have to do is dump it in an authoring program and burn. No need to reauthor or make a non compliant dvd out of it.

Do some research on CVD, you'll thank me.

[TheManuel]

Thanks for the answers.
It looks like what I need is a CVD.

On the other hand, I have to disagree with capturing at half resolution. TV transmission does have a typical horizontal resolution of 330 total lines on a 4:3 display. However, I'm capturing from a Hi8 camcorder. Those are rated at 400+ lines. Furthermore, it seems to me you should capture at the maximum resolution possible to give yourself headroom in picture quality considering the picture will be captured, post-processed and converted. All of these processes have the potential to reduce quality.

However, I do agree that disk space and processing time are an important consideration so everything should be taken into account when deciding upon a resolution.

Regards