MPEG2 Quality

[Wfeagin]

I recently purchased a 2.2 Ghz Pentium4 with 1024 RDRAM , 120 gb Hard Drive, and Matshita DVD-R burner with hopes of capturing my 8mm home videos. I wanted to burn to DVD for archiving and preservation. I have the Dazzle DVC II capture card. I have captured quite a bit of video using the DVD(MPEG2) setting and normal bitrate. I have produced the video using the Moviestar Software which came with the card as well as the Videowave 5 software. I have had to use the Ulead DVD MovieFactory to actually burn to DVD. I have noticed that the quality of the DVD is in my opinion not nearly as good as the original tape. It appears grainy. I am disappointed after reading so much about the great quality of MPEG 2. If this is as good as it gets, then maybe I should just stick with the video tapes. Even it they degrade with time they won't be much worse than this. Is this to be expected? Am I expecting too much of digital video? Any suggestions will be appreciated. I can capture at a higher bitrate but I believe it will be compressed once it is produced to burn to DVD. Thanks

[Kdiddy]

Capture at the highest possible bitrate you can with respect to harddrive space. The higher the better. Now personally, Ive heard, and when I get my card, that caputring to uncompressed AVI (huffy) is much better than capuring straight to mpeg2. I plan on capturing to AVI and then using a better mpeg2 encoder (IE, Cinema Craft), to convert that to mpeg2. DVD bitrates average about 4.5-5 mbps, if you can capture that high w/o dropping frames, you should easily be able to maintain the VHS quality that is on the tapes presently.

[Wfeagin]

Thanks for the info. I'll try capturing at the highest bitrate. The DVC II will not allow me to capture in AVI. I'm trying to decide whether to keep this card or return it for something better, but I'm not sure if there is anything better for capturing analog video.