Software/Hardware codec for DV capture

[czechbase 0]

I was just wondering how people usually capture DV footage from their DV camera. What I normally do is to just plug in the firewire cable into the camera and run that straight into the hardisk that goes into my laptop.

The problem is that the quality is sometimes good and sometimes bad when I render and output to VCD or SVCD. What I mean by that is that the picture is a little blurry and distorted.

I paid a visit to a computer shop and the salesperson sold me the Pinnacle Studio DV Mobile package which comes with the software and a PCMCIA card where you plug in the firewire cable which runs from the camera.

Apparently, this way, I am able to capture hardware codec and get excellent picture quality. The old way meant that I was just capturing software codec and that's why the quality suffered.

Now I haven't yet tried this new piece of hardware but would like to know what everyone else has been doing and if I have been duped in buying something that I really don't need.

Thanks!!
Matthew

www.motavi.com

[indyz 1]

Firewire transfers the video from your camera to your computer exactly as it is stored on the tape. If you have a slow computer it's possible to lose entire frames of video during the transfer, but general blurriness or distortion just isn't possible.

There will be quality loss when converting to VCD. You are cramming MiniDV at 25Mb/s into 224kb/s. The only way to do that is to give up significant amounts of quality. It is unavoidable, and has nothing to do with the Firewire capture.

[FrancoR 0]

What are you using to encode SVCD or VCD? Wich Program? They are quite different. Try Tmpeg, thats one of the good ones. Also what bitrate are you using for the encoding? Can you go for a higher bitrate with your software? If so, do that as long as you stay within the specifications of SVCD.

If it does not cost anything you are the product.

[czechbase 0]

I'm using Pinnacle version 8. I've used Adobe Premier as well with the same unsatisfactory results.

Where can I get Tmpeg?

Not sure how to check what bitrate I am using for the encoding....how do I check that?

www.motavi.com

[FrancoR 0]

I might be wrong but i think pinnacle is not the best in encoding.
You can get tmpeg here:
http://www.tmpgenc.net/

But i think that version does not support mpeg2, so it won't do SVCD. If you want to make an SVCD go for TMPEG Plus, you can get that here:

http://www.pegasys-inc.com/

I don't know how to read out the bitrate of an mpg file, but if Pinnacle encodes it will be a standard SVCD, so it won'T be the problem with a too low bitrate.

If it does not cost anything you are the product.

[czechbase 0]

Thanks, I try that out and see how it works!

www.motavi.com