DV capture to DVD-MPEG2 vs AVI

[bobbin]

I have been capturing DV via firewire to avi, and then converting to MPEG2 for archiving with the goal of editing in the future. All done with Pinnacle Studio 8. These are all home videos, so I'm just trying to preserve the video quality of the DV tapes, some of which are now seven years old.

For those with more experience than me, is there any advantage to capturing to AVI before compressing to MPEG2? Should I just go directly to MPEG2. My capture card is a radeon 9700.

[rcb]

If you are not doing any editing between capping and encoding... and you have that ability to do hardware mpg2 direct cap, then that's the way to go, imho.

If capping directly to mpg2 using s/w, would do some testing first to see that capped files are good ( no dropped frames, a/v sync, etc.) ....

[spectroelectro]

a/v can be a serious issue in capping directly to mpg format. If your video capture card doesn't specifically include a hardware clock that hard-syncs the audio with the video, you probably won't get sync'd audio & video if you capture directly to mpg. You might want to try VirtualDubMod_Sync; it might or might not work on your cap card. In any case you will get superior video quality by first capping to AVI and then encoding outside of real time.

[proxyx99]

I think that if you are capturing and software encoding on the fly vs later I would choose the latter. If you have at your disposal a good hardware encoder than it is worth testing. Don't know about ATI product you have (whether it has hardware encoder or not, I'm afraid that it's rather "not").
When I captured via hardware enc. at 5 Mbps I had to use about 7 Mbps avg. in software encoder to match the quality and eliminate artifacts. Strange, but I couldn't replicate the quality at the same bitrate. In my case hardware encoder (based on my experience) did a pretty good job compressing video. On the other hand if you add audio sync issues, dropped frames, editing, then the picture gets more complicated. Compare results of both methods. If you don't edit or just trim the video and have good hardware encoder than I would go for it. Resoults may be very encouraging.

[bobbin]

Thanks for the input.

I wondered about the MPEG2 capture after reviewing the spec on the All in Wonder 9700 Pro card I have. The spec says:
"Capture still images and analog video in MPEG-2 format at resolution up to 720 X 480 and 30 frames per second to create your own creations".

Will try some comparisons tonight with Studio 8 as it has an MPEG2 capture option.

[scopophilia]

you're going to squeeze every bit of quality out of your video by not going direct to mpeg2. if you can survive by queuing a set of videos over night to encode and then authoring them the next day, i'd definitely would go for that. there are definite quality issues in giong straight to mpeg2, just as there are quality issues in going straight to a standalone recorder, although i'm not going to lie to you, i've seen some pretty perfect standalone and straight to mpeg encodings performed. do some tests for yourself and see what is acceptable for you.

[randytsuch]

I asked the same question a couple of days ago, here is my thread
https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=208043

I am using the AIW9600 Pro, which I would think is a step down from the 9700, but I think the difference is mostly in the graphics display speed, especially for gaming. For video cap, I would think they should act the same.

I am going to give a try capturing to MPG2, and see how it looks. Also, if you haven't check out lordsmurf.com, he has pages to help you setup your aiw card for capturing.

Randy

[lenti_75]

that's the best way to go....AVI then MPEG