Mini DV Capture: Which frontend/CODECs ?

[ToeCutter]

I've been studying furiously to try and understand the DV capture process. I have a JVC DV camcorder and an Adaptec 4300 FireWire card. I've been using Windows Movie Maker that comes with WinXP and it works okay, but I'm curious if there are other, better/easier methods available.

WMM uses the MS DV codec for the capture. I understand that this is the same codec used by Premiere by default. As I'm only concerned with capturing the DV for conversion to MPEG2 using TMPGEncoder, is there a faster, easy way to capture DV? I understand that Main Concepts offers a DV codec that many say works much faster than the MS DV variety. What app frontends the capture process? Can something like VirtualDub be used to frontend the non-MS DV codec?

I've tried the countless other packages (VideoWave, IntroDV, Cleaner, etc.) but I like TMPGEncoder and only require MPEG2 compression. I'd like the process to be this easy:

1. Capture DV-AVI (using whatever frontend/CODEC).
2. Encode to MPEG2 (via TMPGEncoder).
3. Burn to DVD.

Any thoughts?

[jtor]

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...As I'm only concerned with capturing the DV for conversion to MPEG2 using TMPGEncoder, is there a faster, easy way to capture DV?
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Actually, DV is not captured, but 'transferred'. So with that, DV is probably the easiest way to go (as compared to analog captures).

[ToeCutter]

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On 2002-01-07 00:17:21, jtor wrote:
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...As I'm only concerned with capturing the DV for conversion to MPEG2 using TMPGEncoder, is there a faster, easy way to capture DV?
================================================== =========
Actually, DV is not captured, but 'transferred'. So with that, DV is probably the easiest way to go (as compared to analog captures).


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Well, it's not quite that easy. You don't merely copy the video from the camera to the PC. It must be compressed/compiled/whatever after the video is played across the firewire port to actually view on the PC. This can take a great deal of time depending on how much video is compressed/compiled/whatever. Also, I'm using the MS DV CODEC to compress/compile/whatever the video. Why would a CODEC be neccessary if the file is merely transferred? My understanding is that Mini DV has a fixed compression of ratio 5:1 (performed in realtime when you shoot the footage, by the dv camcorder). What exactly is the MS (DirectShow) CODEC doing?

Thanks....