Wow. I'm sorry. I feel like I've just been flogged. I won't bother any of you Vegas elite again.

sammy19, that wasn't flogging, that was excellent advice from a guy who has contributed countless valuable posts to this forum.
If you want to get the best possible quality from your old 8mm. videos, follow John's advice and you won't be disappointed.
A lot of folks in your situation end up using a DVD recorder only to discover that they want to more editing.
That's when they come here asking for ways to not have their quality go downhill even further.
I have several old 8mm. tapes too so I'm in the same situation as you are.
I transfer a few at a time, edit them, make my DVDs, delete the footage and start over again.

Mike

Well it sure felt like it to me. I think when you guys recognize someone with less experience, you could try to not belittle them. I understand exactly what he was saying, it just made me feel like I was the attacker of all things Vegas.

Well... the post sounded a little flogging in my opinion although it was factual. It did not address the .avi format the poster was asking other than to say upgrade your hard drive...not the best answer.

As to .mpg I would point out that Vegas Pro captures my HDV tape in .m2t which is a form of mpeg2 for HDV.

search results for .m2t:
----
.M2T File Extension
File Type HDV Video File
Developer N/A
Popularity
Category Video Files


File Description High-definition video recording format used by many HD camcorders; commonly referred to as "HDV;" uses MPEG-2 compression to store HD video data on DV or MiniDV tapes; supports resolutions of 720p and 1080i.

Of all the fora in the known universe, this one (and johnmeyer) is one of the most civil. Please, suck it up and keep contributing.

Nothing wrong with capturing as Mpg. It's a little unorthodox if you plan on editing, but if you're simply digitizing/transferring (or doing straight cuts) then AVI is a ridiculous waste of time.

Unfortunately Vegas can not capture DV(avi) as mpg. For that you would need something like a Hauppauge TV/capture card.

DVDA will not allow you to re-author the DVD. You need a program to rip the MPEG off of the recorded DVD and then use that MPEG file in DVDA to re-author. There are several programs that will do this, some better than others and some that cost money and some are free.

If you import the DVD into VEGAS, you might be able to use the temp file it creates as the MPEG file for DVDA. That way, you don't have to re-render thru Vegas.

Dave T2

Jack, Vegas captures HDV tapes in MPEG2 because that's what's stored on the tape. It's not converting the video into MPEG 2 as it captures.

As far as using a DVD recorder, it's certainly possible to demux the .VOB files from that disc into MPEG and AC3 files, then use these in DVD Architect without any rendering and add your own new menus as well. Of course, this workflow doesn't involve Vegas at all.

The mpeg vs avi thing isn't a Vegas issue, it's a hardware issue: firewire does digital only so everything you're capturing will be naturally DV. Anything else needs the CPU to do encoding on the fly. You need a card that can record mpeg in real time. Buy one, hook up for those and you're all set! Right now I wish I had one.

Worth noting the ONLY thing Vegas captures in is mpeg-2: HDV. :D Vidcap is a separate program & it captures whatever source you're using (if you're using firewire, that's DV, if you're using a mpeg capture card it's mpeg, etc).

I'd say if you're doing a lot of mpeg-2 captures for direct to DVD that you buy a mpeg-2 capture card. They'll, many times, look better then software encoding too. Also a heck of a lot faster!

Another note: I asked this question on the Adobe forum years ago because I was using a Matrox 2500 at work and capturing with the mpeg-2 codec because I wanted to go straight from recorded clip to a trimmed mpeg-2 file for playback. Five post of nothing but bashing me for using the mpeg-2 codec & no help at all. John gave you some pretty useful advice, the problem was (and is) you never said what you wanted to do.

Sammy, I've been flogged by pros. I think you hit John at the end of a busy or frustrating day. He is usually a pleasant read and I think he meant well.

Besides, he saved me the effort to flog you.......

I am unaware of any pro editor that offers an option to capture MPEG. If you are coming from an analog source, then you need to find a Canopus AVCD-100 or AVCD-300 which converts the analog video and audio into a Firewire stream.

Steve Mann

I just re-read my post, and am having a hard time understanding why it was offensive. I was simply trying to help (as always). (Sigh ...)

I was trying -- badly, I guess -- to provide an explanation of why Vegas doesn't include an MPEG-2 capture option. I also was trying to keep you from doing something that would yield less than great results, hence what I guess was the offensive phrase "it makes no sense, and is the wrong thing to do, to capture in MPEG-2 format." All I meant is that if you have a choice (and you do), then capturing using DV AVI is going to give you a better final result and is going to let you edit more quickly, than if you capture in MPEG-2 and then edit this on the Vegas timeline. The one advantage that MPEG-2 might have (and this depends on your capture card and codec) is that you might capture more accurate color. However, when the source material is consumer analog SD video, I'm not sure this slight advantage would be noticeable. Also, most real-time MPEG-2 capture cards yield results which have more encoding artifacts than does DV video.

As for my recommendation that you consider buying a bigger disc drive, this too was motivated by trying to help you. A lot of people have indicated a similar reluctance over the years to purchasing more storage, usually because they are on a tight budget, but almost always they find, eventually, that the expenditure of a fairly modest amount of money ($70 for a terabyte!!) yields huge dividends over time, both in quality of the final result (because they capture using a codec which preserves more of the original signal, and which can be editing with little or no degradation in quality) AND in terms of speed (MPEG-2 does not provide as "snappy" performance on the timeline, and can force you to take longer to complete your editing).

One thing I didn't address as well as I could have is your question about using a DVD recorder, but then taking that result and putting it into DVD Architect without having DVDA re-render the result. That should work, although you will actually need to test it with your own DVD recorder. If the recorder produces MPEG-2 video that DVDA finds to be "compliant" with its understanding of the DVD specs, then you should be able to add a nice menu and some chapter stops, and have DVDA prepare the DVD without any re-rendering.

If you go with that workflow -- and it is actually a very good workflow for archiving a lot of old 8mm videotapes, as long as you don't need to correct levels & color, add titles, etc. -- one thing I would recommend is that you consider investing in either VideoRedo or Womble's MPEG-VCR. I use a big brother of the latter product (MPEG Video DVD) and it lets me losslessly cut and re-arrange MPEG-2 files before I drop them into DVDA. I use it mostly to re-author my own DVDs (when a client wants a subset of what I've already prepared). This is essentially what you would want to do: take a DVD that you've prepared with your DVD recorder, and cut out unessential stuff; remove gaps; and even re-order scenes, all without having to re-encode and suffer any quality loss.

I hope this additional advice makes up for any curtness, arrogance, or "attitude" that you may have perceived in my post above. I assure you that none was intended. As one of the great characters in cinematic history said (this is from "Lawrence of Arabia"):

Murray: If you're insubordinate with me, Lawrence, I shall have you put under arrest.

John Meyer is one of the most knowledgeable, generous and patient people I know from this forum.
His vast knowledge of video may come off as being a bit abrupt in the delivery, but he wouldn't spend time here if he didn't have an interest in helping the less experienced. If you spent a week asking your questions over at d**m9, you would see what I mean.

However, there is one important point that seems to have been overlooked in the discussion, and it needs to be addressed:

"i'm trying to capture a bunch of old 8mm videos."
This could mean any one of at least three formats:
-- Video8 or Hi8 (both Analog)
-- Digital8 (DV25)
-- (Sorry kids, Super8 is not a video format)

For either of the first two, which would be captured through analog composite or SVHS to AVI or MPEG files, it ain't going to make a heck of a lot of difference which one you choose. The analog tape quality isn't going to benefit from either conversion, since it starts out low-bandwidth, "essentially" 4:1:0 (no need to split hairs here). Either digital encoding format has a higher effective bandwidth than the analog tape source.

That being said, the best a->d capture method I have found for the above at a reasonable price is a Panasonic set-top DVD recorder, using SVHS input if available, or composite. The noise reduction circuitry often (but not always) produces a better result than the original tape source. As John was careful to point out, the recorded DVD files should always be run through VideoRedo or Womble if for nothing else than to fix GOP indexing errors that occurred during capture.

NOW, if your source is Digital8, it should always be captured from the camera through firewire to DV-AVI. That is a bit-for-bit copy of what is on the digital tape, and no losses occur. If there are tape errors, Scenealyzer (a third party capture utility) can sometimes correct or work around them.

Hope I have added something to this other than confusion . . .

Actually, with HDV, mpeg IS the editing format, and the delivery format is even more compressed.

Put on your thicker skin and stay a while. There's lots to learn here and it's well worth weathering the odd perceived slight. You really are quite welcome here.