Plus...when you plug your digicam directly to your TV, you are getting "'pure uncocmpressed" signals playing. Capturing and compressing...well...compresses the video.

The video would look pretty good on a computer screen, but may become somewhat pixalated when you turn around, burn to DVD or VCD and play on the TV screen.

I wouldn't hold a "hollywood professional" video as comparrison to anything you are going to do with a miniDV camcorder, a computer and VV. Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying VV can't do some outstanding editing and post production work - I'm just saying that anything I do at home with my equipment shouldn't be held in comparrison to a production done with equipment that costs waaaaaaaaaayyyyyy more than I make in a year.

I'm not really satisfied with the answers to the original question. I capture MPEG2 from my Sony MicroMV camera, edit in Vegas, re-encode to MPEG2, burn to DVD using DVD-A, then display the results on my 20 Foot screen using my Sony Projector and it looks pretty much as good as commercial stuff I play on DVD. Certainly it is almost as free from artefacts and pixillation as commercial DVDs, therefore I don't think the answers that have been provided to this question are correct. I think there is something else going on about which we don't have enough information. I am sure this 'problem' can be run to ground and solved. So, to auggybendoggy, I say, please provide more information.

How are you playig back the MPEG2 onto your screen? from your computer? from a dvd player? FWIW, I do vids as a hobby and have created over 15 short vids all encoded from Vegas and burnt onto DVD. The quality played back from my home standalone DVD player onto a 32" TV is incredible: I'll say more, the last one I did I had originally encoded it before the last Mainconcept enccoder upgrade which came with DVDA 1c. Re-encoded it after the upgrade and in my eyes the quality is even better!!!

It all very much depend on the original footage of course: dv cams are notoriously poor in low light quality (minidv cams) but in good lighting conditions, the results as far as I'm concerned are superb...

and if you start to play around with colour curves and colour correction...well juts incredible...

"I am a happy camper"


Regards,

PAul.

I dont see a progressive scan selection except for "field order"
also I see no "advanced" button but I do see a "deinterlace method" (but no adv button)
also I see no "MPEG encoder".

I set everything but the mpeg encoder which I cannot find. And still it comes out crappy
if someone with High speed internet is willing to look at the raw video I captured I'd be willing to email it.

Also

Does how I capture matter. Perhaps I need better settings when I capture the video?'

Gene (gene@pinedaprinting.com)

You should be capturing the Video as Raw DV file for editing in Vegas. Then Encode the video. If you import it as Mpeg-2 then back to DV for editing then back to Mpeg-2 you will be adding more artifacts and problems.

Actually, this is untrue. When you shoot DV, it's compressed at the camera at a ratio of 5:1. Uncompressed DV is an oxymoron. Quality seen on the television direct from cam should be identical to quality seen after it's been through any editing so long as the application used for editing has an accurate codec. ANALOG video is compressed on capture, that's true. But again, using a converter that has a good codec will compress this to be identical to the original.
Matching Hollywood professional with a good DV cam isn't that hard. It's an issue of lighting and shooting techniques. Shooting with prime lenses, lighting in a film like manner, and shooting with a 24p cam, or knowing how to shoot in frame mode with most DV cams will get you very, very close. Video is far more contrasted, and has a different gamma than film, so getting it exactly right won't happen. But that's one of the beauties of the format. it's very flexible.

what is 24p? spot can you explain a little to educate me. I would appreciate it.

Auggy