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General discussion

minidv to dvd-quality issues

Mar 21, 2005 3:01AM PST

Hello all-

I'm a new poster who's also very new to the wide wide world of digital camcorders. I've been doing some research for the past few days, and I have to say the more I learn the more questions I seem to have! Based on some of the various threads I've read on this forum I'm very concerned about the ability to transfer from a miniDV tape to DVD and end up with better quality than what I would receive by getting an analog camcorder and just caturing the analog signal though my pc and burning that to a dvd. (My frame of reference right now is limited to the quality that i get from a borrowed analog camcorder hooked up to a big screen rear projection analog tv.)

Was hoping I might could pass along what I've done or am in the process of doing so far and then maybe ask a couple of specific questions. Any thoughts or suggestions would be much appreciated.

What I've done or will do

1. Ordered a Camcorder--Canon Optura 30 (not too late to back out if i need to, though...they still need to confirm some info from me)
2. Installed extra RAM for computer--bought 512MB to bring me up to 640Mb total.
3. Will order a firewire card and firewire in the next couple of days.
4. Planning on getting a second hard drive that will be used only for processing of the DVD's...all i have right now is one primary drive with only 40Gb.
5. Ordered Nero Ultra 6.0
6. No serious editing anitipcated at this juncture but might like to consider in the future.

Questions

1. Based on some things I was reading last night it sounds like Nero Ultra 6 may not be my best choice for converting from miniDv to DVD. Are there any sugesstions on what software under $100 is the best bet for taking what the miniDV has and transferring to dvd with no perceived drop in quality?

2. I understand from what I've read in the forums so far that a dedicated hard drive for processing is a good thing to have. How big of a hard drive would you suggest for being able to sufficiently take, say 2 hours worth of miniDV material and burn to a DVD? Is 200GB sufficient or can I get away with less?

3. If the quality is not much different, would I be better off buying just an average analog camcorder and then getting something like AVERmedia EZDVD PCI to capture and burn the stuff? I want to get into the digital age, but if the quality won't look any better on a finished DVD product I'd rather opt out for now.

Need to make some decisions in the next few weeks as we're getting ready to have our first child! Thanks for any help you can offer.

Brian

Discussion is locked

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Short answers.
Mar 21, 2005 4:20AM PST

1. Based on some things I was reading last night it sounds like Nero Ultra 6 may not be my best choice for converting from miniDv to DVD. Are there any sugesstions on what software under $100 is the best bet for taking what the miniDV has and transferring to dvd with no perceived drop in quality?

I use the Ulead software that came with my DVD recorder. It's version 2 of such and version 3 is at Ulead. The DVD drive was... 69 dollars with the Ulead package.

2. I understand from what I've read in the forums so far that a dedicated hard drive for processing is a good thing to have. How big of a hard drive would you suggest for being able to sufficiently take, say 2 hours worth of miniDV material and burn to a DVD? Is 200GB sufficient or can I get away with less?

I've done 4 hours on my system with just an 120GB drive that holds the XP OS, all my apps and more. 200GB seems nice.

3. If the quality is not much different, would I be better off buying just an average analog camcorder and then getting something like AVERmedia EZDVD PCI to capture and burn the stuff? I want to get into the digital age, but if the quality won't look any better on a finished DVD product I'd rather opt out for now.

Quick answer. Connect with firewire. Try Ulead 2 or 3 bundled with that new DVD recorder.


Bob

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mini-DV is capable of delivering far higher quality than
Mar 21, 2005 5:02AM PST

analog does. It also does not, so far, have issues with tape degradation as the tape ages. Analog has all kinds of issues with loss of data on older tapes. These range from 'snow' or occasional blips in the picture to a complete loss of video and audio. The tape is your ultimate backup and should be retained.

I would forget Nero. For software of that type, I suggest Roxio. These packages include much more than just DVD creation.

200gigs should be enough, and I wouldn't go any smaller these days. You will likely find it useful for things other than video including digital photos which can also consume a lot of space.

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DV Capture
Mar 24, 2005 10:41AM PST

I can answer your hard drive question:
I currently capture 6 hours of DV-quality material at a time and it takes up 100 GB of space on my 120GB drive (which has Win XP installed on it already) I also get away with 512MB ram, although i am upgrading to 1 GB today.

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thanks kyl191
Mar 24, 2005 10:16PM PST

that's perfect, specific information for me. Hope the 1Gb upgrade gives you an added improvement...

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Suggestions from someone who's tried them all (well, most)
Mar 25, 2005 6:37PM PST

What to recommend depends on your level of computer proficiency.

1) Video transfered to your computer will take about 13GB per hour. Plus you need space to process the video and save the output. If you only do an hour at a time, you can get by with 60GB! But if you're like me, the more space the better.

2) You definitely want the 1GB RAM.

3) I think Nero is a very good choice. It's easy to use and outputs good quality DVD's. Just make sure you update it as soon as you install it. Nero issues frequent updates, and especially in video editing the updates are usually useful.

4) If you REALLY want high quality, and don't care about a higher learning curve and more work, look at products from Pegasys. Their TMPGenc line is unbeatable as far as quality goes. With TMPGenc Xpress and TMPGenc DVD Author, you get some impressive results. Downside: These programs aren't for editing video, just for producing a high quality final DVD.

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Look this product over it is great
Mar 25, 2005 8:35PM PST

If your final goal is to have a dvd and not much editing then you should look at this product. It is a stand alone dvd burner from Sony, but you could also hook it up to your computer. Stick with a digital camera, analog is like 200 lines of resolution, were digital is about 500, plus analog is fast becoming a dead technology. Here is the product info to look at.

http://www.sonyburners.com/dvdirect/

Here is what cnet had to say about this product

http://cnet.search.com/search?chkpt=astg.cnet.fd.search.cnet&q=sony+dvdirect&tag=srch

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How fast is your CPU
Mar 26, 2005 3:17AM PST

I note that your original hard drive was 40gb which implies that your computer is at least two or three years old and may have a CPU that is too slow. I was transferring miniDV to my harddrive and was getting a lot of lost frames until I reduced the quality of the transfer which is obviously not what you want to do. I solved that by buying a new computer with a 3.2 Pentium 4. Not suggesting you need that much power but with the price of computer CPU's you may want to consider going that direction rather than paying proportionately more to upgrade each of the components.

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My CPU on the slowest machine is..
Mar 26, 2005 3:55AM PST

A laptop with the p3-600MHz. It's a non-issue to the CPU speed since it's a laptop I can take with me and it just grinds along and does the video edit without a reboot or problem.

How is the CPU clock rate a stability factor here?

Bob