Digitial Video Recording Size

[jchopty]

I have a sony PC 101 video camcorder and the recording media is Mini DV. When i transfer the video from the camcorder to my computer via firewire, I get high quality video on the computer screen.
When I use a DVD authoring softare and make the conversion so that I can burn the video from the hard drive to a DVD, I always get poor quality when I watch the dvd on the television. I assume this is because the television standard is something like 720x580 (or something like that) and the video recording size is 380x280 (or something like that) and when it is converted to DVD, it tries to expand the recorded size to the television size and I lose quality.
Is this correct?
If so, how do I either record the DVD in perfect quality in full size on the television or record the DVD but have it keep the original mini dv recording size so that I do not lose any quality when I watch it on the television?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
THANKS!!

[ItsMe]

Check that you authoring software is writing mpeg2 files and not mpeg1. A good starting point is: mpeg2 720x576 (PAL) or 720x480 (NTSC) and a bitrate of about 6 Mbit/sec vor transcoding DV to DVD. This should give you more or less the same quality as the original.

[jchopty]

Thanks for your reply.
I am using Adobe Premiere 6.0. What authoring software do you recommend? I am using hte PAL based system here.
Properties from my last capture: (Notice the data rate is less than you mentioned)
___________

File Size: 626.17MB bytes
Total Duration: 0:02:56:01
Average Data Rate: 3.55MB per second
Image Size: 720 x 576
Pixel Depth: 24 bits
Pixel Aspect Ratio: 1.067
Frame Rate: 25.00 fps

Audio: 32000 Hz - 16 bit - Stereo

AVI File details:
Timecode: 00:00:00:05
Reel name: '001'
User Timecode: 00:00:00:05
Reel name: '001'
Contains 1 video track(s) and 1 audio track(s).

Video track 1:
Total duration is 0:02:56:01
Size is 604.38MB bytes (average frame = 145.62KB bytes)
There are 4401 keyframes.
Frame rate is 25.00 fps
Frame size is 720 x 576
Depth is 24 bits.
Compressor: 'dvsd'

Audio track 1:
Size is 21.48MB bytes
Rate is 32000 samples/sec, stereo
Sample size is 16 bits

[ItsMe]

I gave up on Adobe ages ago because I found it (version 5) too unstable. I now use a more simple editing solution. namely Pinnacle Studio version 7 for editing and DVD workshop for authoring. This doesn't mean that you should stop using Premiere if its working on you system though.

Your parameters are the *input* from the DV file, not the output. Note that I mentioned Mb and not MB (b = bits, B = BYTES) so your data rate is actually much higher, as it should be being DV. If you were to create a mpeg2 at 3.55MB per second, then it would exceed the DVD specification.

What you could try is after editing rewrite your project back to disk in DV format and then trancode it to a DVD compatible MPEG2 with TMPEnc (see the Tools on this site).

[jchopty]

Thanks for your replies - I appreciate the help.
Have you heard of NeoDVD? I tried it out last night - it is very simple to use and the quality of dvd was pretty good. But ... not perfect. Any advice? I tried the TMPEnc but it actually seems quite complicated as there are many options. Is there any help with this program that you know of? What settings do you use for converting DV to DVD in order to maintain excellent quality? I want to archieve my DV video on DVD so I want to archieve the highest quality dvd possible.
Thanks again.