DV Tapes to DVD

Pachanga wrote on 1/9/2008, 7:59 PM
Have lots of DV tapes (SD) which I want to transfer to DVD with the minimum quality loss. Mostly without effects, just cuts and paste.
- Vegas Pro 8a, DVD Architect 4.5, DVDit Pro HD
- On-motherboard IEEE 1034 port, Sony Capture 6.0d.
- Sony HVR-V1U

1. Could anyone recommend a workflow approach ?
2. All my captured files have the AVI extension. Is this a raw DV lossless transfer or am I doing something wrong ?
3. I notice that Vegas does recompress to MPG2
4. I have read many of you discussing stand-alone encoders, capture cards/software. Is it necessary for this task?

Thanks a bunch !

Comments

earthrisers wrote on 1/9/2008, 8:47 PM
You can't put AVI files on a DVD (except perhaps as pure DATA files, but it wouldn't take many minutes of uncompressed AVI to fill up a DVD... and even then, you couldn't PLAY the result in a DVD player, it would just be a data file).

There isn't any lossless transfer of AVI to DVD. You need to go mpg2 (assuming we're not talking about high-def DVD, a whole different ballgame).

You don't need a stand-alone encoder or special capture-card hardware. Just capture your AVI to your computer the usual Firewire way, then let Vegas or DVD Architect convert to mpg (and ac3, for the audio), to give you the files that can be used on a DVD.
Pachanga wrote on 1/9/2008, 8:56 PM
Thank you for your reply.
Is there a better choice than AVI files when capturing from the camera to Vegas, or is that as good as it gets?
riredale wrote on 1/10/2008, 1:17 AM
One of the great virtues of working with DV compared to the old days of analog is that the data stored on the PC's hard disk is identical to the data on the miniDV tape. There is no generational loss.

But DV is not a lossless format. Rather, it is already compressed about 5:1 when compared to a protocol where each pixel on the imager is represented by 3 bytes of data (1 byte each for red, green, and blue information, with 256 possible levels for each). The compression technique is similar to jpeg in digital still cameras. On top of that, the MPEG2 compression squishes the data by about another factor of maybe 3x.

You will take a modest hit when encoding to DVD, because the colorspace is different for NTSC DV than for DVD. Reds, for example, will be somewhat more smeary in the horizontal direction. If you're dealing with PAL, this won't be an issue.
Chienworks wrote on 1/10/2008, 4:04 AM
Just to highlight one other issue, the DV compression is already done by the camcorder before the signal is recorded to tape. That means that the DV .avi you get through firewire is exactly the same thing that's on the tape, bit for bit, no loss or recompression at all.
Pachanga wrote on 1/10/2008, 6:29 AM
Thanks for the great info. So, if I understand correctly the best workflow to convert those mini-DV tapes to DVD will be:
1. Capture from camera to computer using firewire.
2. This creates an *.avi file in the computer.
3. Use Vegas Pro 8a to render the *.avi files to MPEG2 using a DVDArch template.
4. Burn with DVD Arch with no recompression.
5. Or should I go straight to DVDArch with the *.avi and bypass vegas?

I have created DVDs with a Sony combo VCR/DVD using an S-video connection from the camera to the VCR/DVD and surprinsingly I get better picture quality than using Vegas as described above. I expected the opposite.
TheHappyFriar wrote on 1/10/2008, 7:10 AM
depending on how much you want to transfer, it might not be a bad idea to use an mpeg-2 encoding capture card. Would save all the encoding time for the most part (make sure you capture in settings DVDA likes so it won't recompress). But... if you have a fast machine odds are you could convert the avi's to mpeg-2's in hours. so do it while you're sleeping. :D
riredale wrote on 1/10/2008, 8:03 AM
If you're getting better results with S-video than with Vegas, the implication to me is that you're encoding with Vegas at a super-low bitrate.

Vegas uses the MainConcept MPEG2 encoder, which is a very good product. Your results should be flawless, especially when compared to S-Video. Since I don't use the Vegas MPEG2 encoder very much, perhaps someone else can chime in with encoder settings.
Pachanga wrote on 1/10/2008, 10:04 AM
I have 50+ DV tapes to convert to DVD, so the direct MPEG2 capture sounds like a winner.

Would going straight from camera to MPEG2 via firewire ( thus skipping the *.avi file) result in better quality video, or is it just time savings?

I know now that DVD Arch likes video and audio separate for no recompression, so if one captures from camera directly to MPEG2, that brings audio with video, forcing DVD Arch to recompress, does it not?

Chienworks wrote on 1/10/2008, 1:23 PM
There's no way to capture direct to MPEG2 through firewire. You'd have to have some sort of hardware encoder that accepted DV from the camcorder and encoded in real time, or capture a DV .avi file and run it through a software encoder afterwards.
JohnnyRoy wrote on 1/10/2008, 2:28 PM
> You'd have to have some sort of hardware encoder that accepted DV from the camcorder and encoded in real time

Actually that's no longer true. My Quad Core PC can encode DV AVI to DVD MPEG2 at 3x faster than real-time! (a 1 hour AVI file in only 19 minutes!!!) Since the camera tape can only be captured in real-time, any Dual Core PC shouldn't break a sweat encoding MPEG2 on-the-fly at DVD quality.

So one option is if you have a Dual Core or Quad Core computer you could use software like Ulead DVD Movie Factory 6. In fact, this software will go direct from camera to DVD in one step like a hardware DVD recorder. I have never used it this way but I suppose if you have a beefy PC it should work fine.

Since Ulead DVD Movie Factory 6 has a 30-day fully-functional trial period, you might want to download the trial and try it out now. You have nothing to loose and can knock off those tapes in one step if you're happy with the quality. I realize this isn't a Vegas solution but sometimes it's less steps to use software that was designed for going straight from camera to DVD.

~jr