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Creating High-Quality DVDs from my MiniDV camcorder

Discussion in 'DVDR' started by greninger, Nov 2, 2004.

  1. greninger

    greninger Member

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    Hey guys,

    I love the site - it's hard, though, to find the right thread, so I hope I'm not posting in the wrong place ... Let me ask my question:

    I'm trying to get my Mini-DV tapes of my family authored into DVDs. I would like to cut out some of the extraneous footage, and I want the quality to be the same as I see when I plug in the camera to my HD TV (why blow the money if the picture is crappy).

    After a lot of pain, I got NeroVision Express 2 to work - capture to mpeg, then author and burn. Here is what I have been doing.

    1. Capturing with NeroVision Express (the last patch) using the DVD paramters (MPEG)
    2. Editing clips with Nero-Vision - never had a problem there. Each clip was then exported to an mpeg movie - one movie for each chapter in the DVD.
    3. Authoring with NeroVision
    4. Burning with NeroVision

    Here are my issues

    1. Image quality seems poor - every time I try to change the quality to high (from automatic) the sync between the video and audio fails - the audio tracks ahead of the video, and finishes first.

    So here is what I have tried.

    1. Installing NeroVision 3 - now I can't capture.
    2. Capturing uncompressed AVI files - the quality is better there (of course) but with ULead I get 4 Gb chunks, instead of a single 11Gb stream.
    3. Trying to figure out how to use the huffyuv decoder while capturing.

    My questions:

    1. How should I capture from the camcorder - with uncompressed (AVI) or high-quality MPEG (let's say with the huffyUV decoder). I would love it if the program would create new video capture files everytime there is a transition on the videotape.

    2. I then need to edit the video - add transitions, effects, text, etc. What's the best way to do this without losing quality - and then export to another high-quality video format.

    3. Authoring comes next.

    4. Burning.

     
  2. antons

    antons Member

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    I have used windows movie editor to capture "dv avi" from dv camcorder. 6GB for 30min of video ....

    Then You can use any video editor, like pinacle studio f.ex,.? Render the movie to DV AVI. Here you should have NO quality loss.

    Now, I've used tmpgEnc to encode the audio and video. With MAXIMUM quality and 2Pass VBR encode, I've encoded to mpeg2. This gives me great quality.. but it takes time. 30min video, goes to about 1,4GB mpeg2 and it takes 6-7hours fast 2.4GHz 800FSB and 1GB memory...

    Then I used tmpgEncAuthor to create the actual disc, menus and more, this worked great.

    Please note: Encoding and changing formats will ALWAYS introduce lesser quality, the aim is to MINIMIZE that loss.

    Hope this helps.
     
  3. greninger

    greninger Member

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    Thanks so much for the response. After reading, here is my plan with the software I've got ...

    1. Use either winDV or windows movie editor to capture my entire tape into AVI (do you recommend DV AVI type 1 or 2 - 2 is much larger, right)?

    2. Split and edit my 1 hour video (clip, add transitions, etc) with NeroVision 3 - I'll get my chapters.

    3. Each chapter will be rendered back to AVI (again, type 1 or 2). Does NeroVision have any issues with this? or should I use another program.

    4. Encode each avi to MPEG with TMPGEnc. I guess NeroVision does a bad job of this ....

    5. Use NeroVision to create the Menus, animations, etc.

    Or should I leave everything in AVI and let NeroVision code from the AVI to the DVD format directly?

    Thanks again for the help. There are so many different options, with different software for each one - I guess you have to find the one that fits you best ...

     
  4. lannigan

    lannigan Regular member

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    Try using windvrtocapture in MPEG2. I found I got amazing quality when I captured in WINDVR.

    Always the best to capture in AVI first if you have the hard drive space. Than use TMPGENC Plus to make the Mpeg 2 file. TMPGENC Plus has some super nice HQ filters that will reduce pixelation and sharpen it right up.

    Either or will be good but the longer version with TMPGenc willget you the best quality file. It takes a LONG time though.
     
  5. greninger

    greninger Member

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    Thanks so much guys, for all your help.

    After going with everyone's suggestions, I got a great output! Have gotten to the max resolution of the incoming signal from the camera!!
     

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