Capture in AVI or MPG?

[bowmah]

I have heard I should be capturing my miniDV in AVI to get a non-compressed file. I do no thave the harddrive space at the moment but once I clear out some room, does it still make sense to capture in AVI when the end result I want is to burn to DVD? WHat I do now is Capture in MPG>>Edit>>Author to DVD. Anyone know if I should be capturing in AVI>>Edit>>Author to DVD?

1. Would the larger non-comprssed AVI be quicker to edit than the smaller compressed MPG's?

Capturing to MPG has resulted in very decent DVD quality thus far.

Any tips would be great! I am new at this!

[daamon]

Hi bowmah,

The footage on the miniDV is recorded in the DV AVI format by the camera. When you put it on to PC, you're not capturing - more transferring. (Yes, there is a technical difference - read up on it).

You can use the excellent and free WinDV (or similar) to do this. DV AVI is approx. 13.5Gb per hour. This includes PCM (uncompressed) audio at 1,536kbps.

DV AVI has a bitrate of 25Mbps - compared to DVD (which uses the MPEG2 format), which has a max of around 8 - 9Mb. So, DV AVI is 3x more superior in quality - technically speaking. However, the human eye can't detect much difference beyond about 8Mbps - that's why DV and DVD don't look much different.

The reason why people say to transfer to DV AVI, edit and then encode to MPEG2 (for DVD) is because the quality is being retained right until the last minute. DV AVI is well suited for editing.

Whereas, editing in MPEG2 can cause noticeable quality loss because of the way MPEG2 is compressed, or "made up".

To answer your question, I don't know if editing DV AVI would be any quicker - I've never compared, nor never read a comparison.

But, as you're happy with the quality of the DVDs you're getting, I'd say to stick with it as it is and, when you know more about encoding to MPEG2, then try editing in AVI and compare your results.

Hope that helps.

[bowmah]

I will just have to clear out my harddrive and test with bigger AVI files. Why can't harddrives on laptops be lower cost!

Anyone else have any thoughts on the AVI vs MPG question?

[yoda313]

Why can't harddrives on laptops be lower cost!

Thats because of the minituarization.

External usb or firewire harddrives are starting to come down in price as an alternate.

If you 're happy with the mpeg mode stick with it. I've capped straight to mpeg with my wintv pvr250 which only has mpeg recording and love the quality.

[bowmah]

THanks for the reply Yoda313. I plan on sticking with MPG as my dump version but I am still wondering if a P4 with 1 Gig of RAM is going to be better off (speed wise) using DV-AVI for editing rather than MPG.

[kisrum]

WHat I do now is Capture in MPG>>Edit>>Author to DVD

what program are you using to capture DV-AVI to Mpg?

everyone seems to agree it's better to edit in AVI and then encode to MPG. That said, since all the "editing" I do is chop, occasionally add music background, and a couple transitions, I typically transfer and convert to MPG, with Pinnacle 8 - hey it was free - in one step, and then use Mpeg Video Wizard to do the editing.

I'm lazy, not smart but my audience of family members certainly doesn't care. I still have the stuff I care about on DV tape, so I can go back later and re-transfer to AVI and do it right when I have more time and interest.

I've heard that slower computers have trouble with the one step transfer - convert to Mpg, but mine has been okay.

[whitejremiah]

I'd say your best bet would be to capture to lossless using maybe virtualdub, then convert it to dvd mpeg with tmpgencenc...........that program will cost you some money, but its well worth the cost, take my word......particularly if you are going to be doing this on a regular basis....

[bowmah]

what program are you using to capture DV-AVI to Mpg?

I am using Ulead VIdeo Studio 7.0. Seems to do a pretty good job in my opinion. Anyone else see a big difference with this ulead product? It was sure better than the results using WinDVD Creator to transfer.

I'd say your best bet would be to capture to lossless

So basically, this is going to give better quality than compared to the Ulead transfer + convert 1 step method? Maybe I am missing something but what does this mean?

particularly if you are going to be doing this on a regular basis...."

I now use Ulead to do this process in 1 step with decent quality. What is the benefit of doing the above when this is going to be a regular basis?

[whitejremiah]

sorry, shouldve been more specific with my answers.......lossless AVI is what i was referring to, more specifically something like huffyuv (this will reproduce the picture EXACTLY the same as the input...minus whatever quality loss is caused by the cables running to the pc from the input) You would end up with a picture thats probably a lot sharper, and with even less pixilation than what you have right now.......don't get me wrong, ulead is a pretty solid program, but for capturing, personally i perfer losless (mind you though, if you dont have that type of harddrive space, there's also an alternitive called mjpg, and even the latest versions of divx seem to be pretty good for capturing) what is happening right now when you are capturing on the fly, is your computer is trying to compress the movie while its being captured, the drawback to this, is that it's probably compressing it less efficiantly than if you were to compress it from a losless source.......give it a run my way, and see which way is better for you, thats about your best bet....i will say this though, the way that your going right now is probably about the EASIEST but not the best quality......

[bowmah]

Thanks for the clarification whitejremiah. I will have to clean out my HDD and try the work flow you suggested. THe problem is HDD space for me. On a laptop with 60 Gigs of slow spinning HDD.

[Richard_G]

sorry, shouldve been more specific with my answers........

and maybe should have read the question too! He is talking about a Firewire transfer from MiniDV. He has two choices, a straight bit for bit file copy giving a DV avi file, or using the on-the-fly mpeg encode that a number of transfer programs offer. Capture using Huffy is only applicable to analogue CAPTURE, not DV TRANSFER.

[bowmah]

ok, no need to try Huffy then. I am indeed transfering and not capturing. Sorry about the language. Newbie here and the software that I use call it Capture