how to convert avi files without loosing too much quality

[moults]

Can you help a newbie

I have recently tranferred 3 tapes direct from my mini dv camcorder. Each tape equates to a file of approx 13GB. What I would like to do is burn them to a dvd or 3 dvd's without losing too much of the excellent quality.

I tried using dvd santa but the output was only 1.5GB from a 13GB file.

Any suggestions would be appreciated

[Capmaster]

You need to encode it. The files are in DV format and need to be encoded to MPEG2 and authored prior to burning.

Unfortunately you will lose some quality when you encode ...it's unavoidable when you compress, which is what encoding is.

Check out the tools section for some good editors/encoders. I use MPEG Video Wizard and Nero Vision Express for encoding, but there are free apps that will do it for you

[wwjd]

I would also suggest CCE Basic ($58) or TMPGEnc 2.5. Both will do an excellent job of encoding avi to mpeg2 compliant files. I personally use CCE Basic because it is fast and does a good job.

As was stated, some loss is unavoidable but using a proven good software app to do the encoding is a good thing to do.

wwjd

[wwjd]

For some reason an Emotion Econ got inserted into my reply. The cost of CCE Basic is $58.00.

wwjd

[edDV]

To preserve the best quality, edit your material and transfer the "Edit Master" back to DV tape.

By all means, use DVD authoring programs to make current DVDs, but in the future we will all have big screen HDTVs. You will be glad you preserved the highest quality DV material on tape.

Future codecs will be available to make optimal DV to HDTV presentation.

[tmh]

You know, I never thoought to save my final AVI back to mini DV after editing. I just go through the DVD conversion process and then eventually delete the AVI files. No more. I can get a bunch of Sony mini DV tapes fairly cheap online somewhere then just record my final AVI file back to my camcorder. Thanks again, ed.

Actually, now that i have firwire input on my standalone DVD recorder, i can play them from the camcorder regularily.