Transferring DVC to VCD / SVCD / DVD

[hitenmdesai]

Please Please Please help me out!!!!!!

Are branded capture cards the only answer? (the ones offered to me was about USD 800. And what does the capture card do other than capturing? Is there no other alternate solution??? There were also Pinnacle solutions for USD 150 but they all were hard- selling the 800 dollar range... No one was interested in explaining that whats so special that the price range is about USD 800 but offered me only one answer QUALITY. By the end of it i was repulsed by that word!

I have the following config:
CPU : P4 2.8 GHZ
Motherboard : ASUS P5RD1
HDD : 160 GB SATA HDD from Seagate
RAM : 512 MB DDR from Tamron
IEEE1394 Texas Instrument OCHI Compliant card installed

I also have a Panasaonic camcorder

I have captured video using the firewire card installed. Then using Movie Maker, Adobe Premiere 6.5 and Pinnacle Studio Plus 9.3 done editing adding music tracks and various other fun stuff for my videos.

But the time taken for the above software for creating a VCD / SVCD / DVD is phenomenal. Also the output, especially DVD is not great at all.... In Premiere had to allow almost 2-3 hours for rendering and thereafter 30 mins for NERO to convert into DVD, in Pinnacle it took about an hour to create a DVD directly, but the quality wasnt good enough even though it said 100% quality. I checked with local vendors of photo/video supplies and they were more interested in selling their wares (one outbidding the other) and as a result am more confused than ever.

If thats the case my computer will conk off sooner and i have more than 20 tapes of conversions to do......

Please guide me as to what should i invest in Software / Hardware / both?
Also which companies SW / HW should i go in for? As i am not a professional and this would be my one time investment please understand.
I would be grateful if you could answer in this forum or email me at hitenmdesai@yahoo.com

thanks in advance
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[hitenmdesai]

come on guys is there no one who can advice me on this????

yesterday i checked out the pinnacle av/dv and pro. both the products offer nothing more than a "capturing device" and software. the redering part is here to stay....

pl advise

[guns1inger]

Looking at what you have written, I would say your quality issues come from not knowing how to use the software you have correctly.

Example - 3 hours to encode from Premiere is reasonable, however if Nero did anything other than just burn the video, then there is your first problem.

Before you go spending more money, invest some time in making sure you are in fact getting the best out of what you have.

Personally, I would ditch Pinnacle right off the bat.

Premiere, if it runs stably for you, is a good enough editor. If you wanted to invest in anything to improve your outcomes, look at ProCoder Express, as the mpeg encoder in Premiere 6.5 wasn't that great.

Start reading about bitrates and bitrate calculators. Learn how to properly tune your encoder to get the best quality out of it.

Accept that video takes time. If you aren't happy with 3 hours to produce a disc, then you need to find a new hobby. No offense, but you just have no idea what you are in for. I have a 2 hour tape that processed for 10 hours last night, and that was just to clean it up. It will take another 6 hours tonight to encode it for DVD. And my system is faster than yours.

If you want a nice, simple, real-time process for getting your tapes onto DVD, buy a DVD recorder. If you want nice menus, use the DVD recorder to transfer to disc, rip that to your PC, use TDA to add some nice simple menus, then burn back to a new disc using something that is not called Nero. I would recommend ImgBurn2.

This would be the simplest, quickest solution.

[edDV]

Premiere, if it runs stably for you, is a good enough editor. If you wanted to invest in anything to improve your outcomes, look at ProCoder Express, as the mpeg encoder in Premiere 6.5 wasn't that great.

Owners of Premiere 6.5 can upgrade free to Mainconcept version 1.3 and get a discount for upgrade to v1.4 or v1.5.
http://www.mainconcept.com/adobempeg.html

Please guide me as to what should i invest in Software / Hardware / both?
Also which companies SW / HW should i go in for? As i am not a professional and this would be my one time investment please understand.

Premiere 6.5 is quite capable as an editor. You can upgrade if you think you need more.
Mainconcept v1.3 does a reasonable encoding job. Upgrade to v1.5 (full version) is just$50.

You will need a separate authoring program. If Nero is taking hours, you probably have it set to reprocess the MPeg2 and that is probably killing your quality. Ditch Nero for one of these $50-90 programs

TMPGenc DVD Author 2
http://tmpgenc.pegasys-inc.com/en/product/tda20.html

ULead DVD Movie Factory 5
http://www.ulead.com/dmf/runme.htm

ULead MF5 includes a recent version of the Mainconcept MPeg2 encoder and can capture directly in DV format. You will need to add a separate MPeg2 encoder module for TMPeng if you want to use their encoder instead of Mainconcept.

You can get a good solution above for less than $100.
Simplest solution is add ULead DVD Movie Factory 5 to Premiere 6.5.

If you want a hardware MPeg2 encoder at a reasonable price that will work from the realtime DV format output ("Print to Tape") of Premiere 6.5, look for a standalone DVD Recorder with DV IEEE-1394 input and record at the highest quality setting.

[hitenmdesai]

Thanks a zillion guys

i got the picture somewhat so if i need Good quality DVD in minimum time (post pinnacle or premiere editing) i need to get a DVD recorder....... Right???

probably i will in my next budget spend

till then i hope something new comes up where i can use my comp to do what i bought it for in the 1st place

[royphil345]

Well...

It would speed up encoding. Quality from an affordable real time hardware encoder might actually be worse though.

I agree that it just sounds like you need to learn the software a little better. If you encoded your video to the format / quality / size you wanted in your editor, there would have been no need for Nero to encode again. Quality should be excellent converting DV to DVD at a high quality setting. Sounds like you may have compressed your video too much, and done so twice, causing the poor quality and long encoding time.

I agree that Ulead DVD MovieFactory may help you. It simplifies the process some. Has built-in burning software that will burn a disc at the simple settings you choose for the whole project (DVD standard play, DVD long play, etc...). Ulead VideoStudio is similar and adds a few more features for fancier editing (effects, etc...) Both of these apps do everything from importing your DV files and editing to authoring and burning the disk. Quality choices are simplified, less room for error.

The software you have is capable of excellent quality results. Probably in less time if used properly. Maybe a little confusing for a beginner...