Am I supposed to capture as mpeg avi or something else?

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

I am using the Canopus ADVC 100. It works great. Audio and video sync
well.

What do I capture the video as? I am not sure if I even have a choice.
Do I try and get it as an MPEG-2, AVI or something else? I thought
that when I burned it to DVD that it became an MPEG-2 video. But if it
starts as and AVI and then converts to MPEG-2, I am afraid I am
diminishing the quality with the conversions. Please comment.
Thank you.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

john_20_28_2000@yahoo.com wrote:
> I am using the Canopus ADVC 100. It works great. Audio and video
> sync well.
>
> What do I capture the video as? I am not sure if I even have a
> choice. Do I try and get it as an MPEG-2, AVI or something else? I
> thought that when I burned it to DVD that it became an MPEG-2 video.
> But if it starts as and AVI and then converts to MPEG-2, I am afraid
> I am diminishing the quality with the conversions. Please comment.
> Thank you.


The Canopus outputs a firewire signal which your computer interprets as DV
AVI. From there you do the conversion to MPEG-2 using an authoring program.
Will you lose quality? Most definitely. However, most folks really don't
see the loss so I wouldn't worry about it. The caveat to that is if you try
to burn a 3 hr. video to DVD. Because of the low bitrate required to do
this, you will see a quality loss. With 1 hr. of video though, nothing to
worry about.

Mike

 

[Ruben]

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

On 14 Dec 2004, john_20_28_2000@yahoo.com posted to rec.video.desktop as
follows:

> I am using the Canopus ADVC 100. It works great. Audio and video sync
> well.
>
> What do I capture the video as? I am not sure if I even have a choice.
> Do I try and get it as an MPEG-2, AVI or something else? I thought
> that when I burned it to DVD that it became an MPEG-2 video. But if it
> starts as and AVI and then converts to MPEG-2, I am afraid I am
> diminishing the quality with the conversions. Please comment.
> Thank you.
>


If you are wanting to create a DVD for playback on a home system you will
need to end up with an MPEG2 file. If you want to edit your video before
creating the DVD, you should convert to AVI for editing, then convert
your edited video to MPEG2.

Converting to MPEG2 will certainly cost you some quality since MPEG2 is a
compressed format, but depending on your bitrate settings you may not
notice the difference.



--
Ruben

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

I am using VIdeowave because it came with my DVD writer. Is this bad?
By bad, I mean does it do a bad job of taking the DV AVI and converting
it to MPEG for the DVD player to use? Or should I encode myself with
another encoder and then just let Videowave burn it to the DVD in the
correct format.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

john wrote ...
> I am using the Canopus ADVC 100. It works great.
> Audio and video sync well.

It is a favorite of many of us.

> What do I capture the video as? I am not sure if I even
> have a choice.

The Canopus ADVC-100 puts out *only* DV. Most capture
programs will take this DV stream and put it into an AVI file.
(For example www.scenalyzer.com)

> Do I try and get it as an MPEG-2, AVI or something else?

If you record as anything other than AVI-DV, the capture program
will have to convert from DV to MP2 (or whatever you want to
save as.) This takes a lot of computer horsepower and I would
NOT recommend it as you may have endless problems with
dropped frames.

> I thought that when I burned it to DVD that it became an MPEG-2
> video.

DVD, by definition, is MPEG2. Conversion from whatever you
have to MPEG2 must take place somewhere. Some DVD authoring
applications do this internally (and transparently to you).

> But if it starts as and AVI and then converts to MPEG-2, I am
> afraid I am diminishing the quality with the conversions.

Yes, by definition conversion from DV to MPEG2 involves loss
of quality. That is because there is not enough space on a DVD
to store higher-quality formats like DV.

Note that there are several applications that convert DV to MPEG2.
Which are better (or what conversion settings to use, etc.) are the
subject of endless debate, sometimes of religious fervor.

If you have the time and inclination, you can collect the whole set
and try dozens of experiments with your own video to find out
what combination is best. OTOH, if you are just a casual user
you can just accept the built-in conversion of some of the simpler
DVD making apps.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

> I am using the Canopus ADVC 100. It works great. Audio and video sync
> well.
>
> What do I capture the video as? I am not sure if I even have a choice.
> Do I try and get it as an MPEG-2, AVI or something else? I thought
> that when I burned it to DVD that it became an MPEG-2 video. But if it
> starts as and AVI and then converts to MPEG-2, I am afraid I am
> diminishing the quality with the conversions. Please comment.
> Thank you.

MPEG2 is by nature a lossy format, which means it loses quality from the
original source material. DV AVI, which is the format you should originally
capture to is also a little bit lossy, but you will get far better results
capturing to DV AVI and encoding to MPEG2 than capturing straight to MPEG2.
Having your source as DV AVI makes it a lot easier to edit as well. As long
as you don't do numerous unnecessary re-encodes along the way, you shouldn't
notice much loss of quality.

Make sure you use a good MPEG2 encoder, such as ProCoder, TMPGenc or CCE.
Use a VBR setting to get the best quality, and if your source material is
VHS, you might want to experiment with the 352 x 480 (352 x 576 for PAL)
resolution, which many people find to be an excellent compromise between
size and quality.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

> I am using VIdeowave because it came with my DVD writer. Is this bad?
>
> By bad, I mean does it do a bad job of taking the DV AVI and converting
> it to MPEG for the DVD player to use? Or should I encode myself with
> another encoder and then just let Videowave burn it to the DVD in the
> correct format.

Yes, Videowave is bad. It's slow and not very good quality. Grab a trial
version of TMPGenc and see if you don't prefer that. It's pretty slow too,
but very good quality. I don't remember if CCE or ProCoder have trial
versions.

As for burning, I suppose it doesn't make that much of a difference what
software you use, but you might want to steer clear of Videowave altogether.
TMPGenc also have an authoring app with build-in burning, which is very
handy and easy to use. DVDlab is also quite popular.