Need some direction

[The Lizard]

I have had a Sony TRV30 DV Camera for a while and want to be able to convert the data to a number of different formats. I have tried a number of different software products (Premiere, Videostudio, etc) but I dont' feel like I'm getting the hang of it. I have researched into this subject and am at the end of my rope. I feel like I'm just confusing myself more and more. I think that htis forum might be the answer.

So lets start at the beginning. Capturing the DV. Is my firewire card alright. Is there software I should be using that works better that the others. Codecs. Are they integral to the capturing of the DV or do they come into play later. Guidance would be much appreciated.

[tonyp12]

Nearly any Firewire-card will do, not much difference between them.

What format?

What do you want to do with the Final Video?

One thing to remember is to keep it in DV format while editing
and only encode to MPEG in the last step before buring to DVDR/CDR

[Mavrick]

Are you wanting to make VCD's, SCVD's, or XSVCD's? Give me a little info on what you want to do, and I'll see what I can do...

[The Lizard]

For now I would like to burn to CDR, but here in the near future I would like to burn to DVD. I would really like to find a way of backing up my DV in a way that keep the highest integrity of the quality. Which format is best?

[tonyp12]

Backing up DV-Data, only short film clips will fit
on a 750MB CDR if you keep it in DV-AVI format.

If it fits, just burn the CDR as a DATA CD with the AVI file.

If you have a huge Harddrive, keep them there for now.
If not, probably best is to keep it on the MiniDV tape (get more tape)


DV to SVCD is the best if you want to encode to mpeg now.
Settings: "interlaced" & "bottom field first (B)".

[Mavrick]

I agree with tonyp12… If you really want to go to DVD, just save the DV tape for now. DVD writers are coming way down in price – $299.00 for +R, +RW drives. If you want to try for a SVCD or XSVCD now, capture the DV into uncompressed AVI, then convert to MPEG2 at 480x480. Remember the higher the bitrate, the better the quality. (make sure your DVD player can handle it) I encode at a VBR of 4000, and the quality is as good as the original tape. The downside is I can only get 20min of video per CD at that settings, but it looks like DVD quality.

[The Lizard]

That sounds good but what software should I use? Also, Is it just as easy to eventually go to DVD when I have transferred the AVI's to a CDR, or will the preferred method still be to take it off the DV tape?

[tonyp12]

MovieMaker that comes included in WindowsXP will do fine.
Just make sure to save a DV_AVI (in "others")
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/using/howto/multimedia/movies/firststeps.asp

defrag the HD to make sure you do not drop frames.

If you re-encode the AVI as a MPEG2-SVCD, some quility
will be lost and can never be reclaimed.