Question about Mini DV capture resolution

[tdc99]

Hello all,

I've had a Mini DV cam for quite some time, but I've only recently attempted to move the content to a DVD.

When I bought my cam, I recall seeing something about "520 lines of resolution". Does this mean that my camera is trying to stretch 520 lines to fit into the Mini DV 720x480 resolution?

When I transfer the contents to my PC, I get "stairstep" effects on diagonal lines. However, if I connect the cam directly to my TV, I don't see this. Can anyone provide any tips?

I initially thought this may be due to interlace / pc resolutions. But, when I convert/burn to DVD and play it on my home DVD/TV, it looks approximately the same.

BTW, here's my setup: Panasonic PVDV-601 camera, Firewire connection, DVIO and/or MS MovieMaker 2, Win XP.

All help is greatly appreciated.

[bugster]

Don't know what is meant by the 520 lines of resolution claim.

The stair step you describe is almost certainly interlacing. Remember when encoding to mpeg for DVD that DV is bottom field first. If you set this incorrectly it will look awful.

[Turtle49]

Lordsmurfs site has a guide that talks about stair stepping.

See his "Capturing AVI with an ATI Card" guide at www.lordsmurf.com.

Hope this helps