bad quality captured video

[Gondor]

Hello all
I am extremely a newb so please forgive my ignorance.
I am trying to transfer dv from my Sony minidv but my avi always having problem. I first transferred with 720x480 and video jerks and sound cuts. I then tried 640x480 and the file was ok but on fast motion it blurs and I can see wavy horizontal lines. I am using easy Roxio DVD creator 6 .
I searched the forum and got much help and I think I need a good capture tool better than roxio. I have almost all software I need, but I am totally lost on how to set the capture settings. I would appreciate any ideas from where to start doing my capture.
Thanks

[Baldrick]

horizontal lines is normal, it is called INTERLACED.
read
http://www.digitalfaq.com/capture/dv.htm
and
http://www.digitalfaq.com/capture/interlace.htm

then try anyway some other tools for best dvd quality,
copy the dv to your hd with windv or dvio or scenalyzerlive.
convert to dvd with a good mpeg encoder like mainconcept mpeg encoder or tmpgenc or cinemacraft encoder.
author with to dvd tmpgenc dvd author.

[Nosey249]

I've copied and then authored a few dvd's off my sony, you get that on the pc, all that you described, but when you put it to dvd it works great...

I have used dvio, works great, very little lost frames, but I don't like having to convert and the avi file for almost 1 1/2 hours is about 20gig..

my last one I used Unlead dvd maker, it converts on the fly, but when I converted to dvd I lost all sound, so I took the file and tried tmpgenc dvd and it came out pretty good..

hope this helps..

[Gondor]

I switched to pwerdirector3 it does a great job, transfer, edit and render to avi or mpeg1,2 . The only problem now is that I have small quality loss when transferring from minidv (interlaced), only on fast scenes motion and can't seem to avoid this.
I also tried transfer using scenalyzer and still have interlaced footage.
Any ideas?
Thank you

[FulciLives]

DV camcorder footage is INTERLACED and should be left that way.

If the capture looks "worse" than playing back on a TV it is only because a computer monitor has a much higher resolution and shows compression problems easier than a TV.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman