When capturing to hdd, dv or mpeg4?

[Jensen]

I have a program that will capture dv from the camcorder straight to mpeg-4. Is this good or bad? I know that dv is a great quality, what do I lose when using mpeg-4?

[redwudz]

Depends on what you want to do with the video. DV is about 5:1 compression. MPEG-4 can be 20:1 or higher. Not to say that MPEG-4 might not be great quality, but it's much harder.

With any codec, it depends on your source quality, then it depends on the bitrate used to encode to different formats.

If what you want is MPEG-4, that's fine. But in general, encoding on the fly won't get you great quality. You may be better off capturing, or actually, transferring the DV to the computer, then re-encoding it to your preferred format.

Then you have the options of multiple passes, maybe some filtering and cropping to get the best quality output.

[Jensen]

I think thats a great point. Dvd are mpeg-2 right? From what I have seen mpeg-4 is on all the devices like ipod. So if I want to just home movies out of my dv, capture to the hdd, edit and convert the edit to dvd? As opposed to converting the whole thing first then editing. I really can edit both so software doesnt matter, but over all quality does, so dv would still be better.

[redwudz]

DV is really 'made' for editing. All frames are keyframes, so you can cut wherever you want without losses or re-encoding. Xvid, for example, has a keyframe every 300 frames by default. That makes it all but impossible to do frame accurate editing.

Yes, most DVDs are MPEG-2, though you can use MPEG-1 at a reduced quality. MPEG-4 is a container name, much like AVI, that doesn't tell much about the format. The name of the codec used is what the format is.

If you have lots of computer power, try H.264. It's a very compact format, though it takes a bit of time to encode and a fair amount of CPU power to decode. Otherwise, Xvid or Divx is a good choice. And then have the added advantage of playback on a Divx set top player, if you configure the encoding properly.

[Jensen]

H.264 is not a free codec is it? I think if I found it right, its $160.00 on amazon. Wow, when I get into professional stuff, or extra money Ill look into that further. For now Xvid or Divx works for me, I'm trying it now actually.

I noticed when reviewing a project, btw not yet working with dv sources, just an editing question. One source in particular came from my mother-in-laws dvd-rw camcorder, I noticed with the finished product that the video was really bad. For those segments only. The other sources came from a different cam. Are those camcorders video poor quality?

[redwudz]

The freeware MeGUI can encode to X.264

DVD camcorders are generally a lower quality output than a DV camcorder. The DVD camcorders use internal hardware to convert to MPEG format most times. Some hard drive camcorders do the same. Some camcorders also convert to MPEG-4 formats directly.

And is the DVD camcorder video from the original disc? Or has it been edited or converted? Each re-encode will lower the quality.

[Jensen]

No its a copy. Not re-encoded though. The camcorder finalized the original minidvd and I copied to hdd on computer. First time trying to edit it.

How can i use megui best to work for me?

[edDV]

General rule of thumb for semi pro result : Shoot DV, capture DV, edit DV, save a DV edit master ... then and only then encode to MPeg2 or MPeg4.

If you need to add MPeg2 to the edit, import it. It will decompress and drop a generation.

[Jensen]

eddv: Noted. Just was playing with video from mother-in-laws dvd-camcorder.
I cant wait to see the difference in dv when the cam gets here.

[DarrellS]

I have a program from ATI called AVIVO Transcoder. Not sure if it's free or not. I didn't pay anything for my copy but I don't know if that's because I have an ATI capture card and the ATI MMC already on my PC.

It seems to be pretty fast at converting files to H264 and the files that I have made don't use any CPU compared to all the other H264 files on my PC that stutter all over the place. Nero and PowerDVD both have trouble playing all my other H264 files.

Also, you don't have to install any pay codecs or players on your computer to play the files. Windows Media Player uses the ATI decoder to play the files since they have an AVI extension.

[Jensen]

H264 looks great compared to a lot of other formats. I found out today My software already had the codecs for it. Thanks

Regards
Jensen