How to convert mini DV's into DVD's

[Ragz]

I have several Mini DV's that I want to convert into DVD's for regular watching. I dont want to compromise on the quality at all. What are the suggested soultions?

Thanks,
Anurag

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Do you have a miniDV camcorder? If you do, then hook that baby up to your machine with a firewire port, and go to town with something like Pinnacle Studio 9...
Tas.

 

[Ragz]

Yes I have tried this, but I used MS Movie maker for the purpose. For full resoultion transfer, the HDD reqmnt was huge. Does pinnacle allow direct buring of the mini DV to the DVD's without altering the quality of the A/V? If so great. Else, what are other soultions? Are there any add on cards available that can do the compression on the fly and directly burn on to the DVD?

thanks,
Anurag

 

[Vegito]

Originally posted by: Ragz
Yes I have tried this, but I used MS Movie maker for the purpose. For full resoultion transfer, the HDD reqmnt was huge. Does pinnacle allow direct buring of the mini DV to the DVD's without altering the quality of the A/V? If so great. Else, what are other soultions? Are there any add on cards available that can do the compression on the fly and directly burn on to the DVD?

thanks,
Anurag

if you're compressing you're altering the quality.. you can't have full quality when converting to dvd. So unless you compress it and lose quality, it wont fit on dvd

 

[ToeJam13]

Originally posted by: Ragz
Yes I have tried this, but I used MS Movie maker for the purpose. For full resoultion transfer, the HDD reqmnt was huge. Does pinnacle allow direct buring of the mini DV to the DVD's without altering the quality of the A/V? If so great. Else, what are other soultions? Are there any add on cards available that can do the compression on the fly and directly burn on to the DVD?

thanks,
Anurag

The problem with DV is that it uses a completely different compression algorithm than DVD. DV and MiniDV uses a DCT-Intraframe codec, which is not so dissimilar to M-JPEG. DVD uses MPEG-2. As such, it is impossible to convert from DCT-I to MPEG-2 without some loss during the recompression stage.

If your camcorder has the ability to attach to your computer as an external drive, you might be able to keep the hard drive requirements down by keeping the DV file on the tape. If your camcorder doesn't offer this feature then you're out of luck. You'll have to splurge for a new 400GB drive.

 

[Gstanfor]

You should be able to avoid any noticable quality loss by first converting the video to huffyuv format, then encoding that to DVD. This should eliminate transcoding errors. However, this takes more time and more HDD space.

 

[ToeJam13]

I just downloaded a few DV clips and have been trying to easily convert them into MPEG-2. Its not been pretty.

The only inexpensive program ($30) I have found that converts directly from DV to MPEG-2 is Xilisoft's 3GP Video Converter. It will import AVI (*.avi), DV (*.dv, *.dif), Quicktime (*.mov, *.qt), Flash (*.swf), M-JPEG (*.mjpg), Animated GIF (.gif), MPEG-1/-2 (*.mpg, *.mpeg, *.dat, *.vob), MPEG-4 (*.mp4, *.h261, *.h264), RealMedia (*.rm), Windows Media (*.asf, *.wmv, *.wma) and a few other raw formats. It will export AVI, MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 video formats. The MPEG-2 encoder has a few presets for SVCD and DVD encoding, too. A free crippleware version is available for testing.

I haven't found any freeware DV conversion programs. There is a freeware DV codec available, but what you need is a utility that can read raw DV streams. The free DV codec is only for use with a standard media wrapper like AVI, OGG or Quicktime.

 

[BlackAdam]

Use Windows Movie Maker to rip the DV to an AVI... use WinAVI to convert to VOB.

 

[ToeJam13]

Originally posted by: BlackAdam
Use Windows Movie Maker to rip the DV to an AVI... use WinAVI to convert to VOB.

There are several utilities that do this. The problem is that you're stuck using an intermediate file. If you want to keep quality loss to a minimum, it means using a lossless codec like RLE. Furthermore, those intermediate files can easily be 10x to 30x larger than the original DV file.

I get the feeling that Ragz doesn't have the hard drive capacity to do something like this, yet he demands the highest in video quality. So even using an intermediate file compressed with MPEG4 isn't going to work for him.

 

[gsellis]

Originally posted by: Ragz
I have several Mini DV's that I want to convert into DVD's for regular watching. I dont want to compromise on the quality at all. What are the suggested soultions?

Thanks,
Anurag

How much do you want to spend?

DV to DV-AVI is almost loseless (we are talking 0.1%). With the common tools, that is about as good as you are going to get. From that point, it can get expensive. The best converter is probably out of your price range. Pegasys TMPGenc is one of the best and supports 2 pass variable bit rate compression.

The most versatile authoring package is Mediachance's DVD-Lab which can be bundled with TMPGEnc and also has a AC3 DD Stereo plugin. All of that is getting close to $200, but you can try both TMPGEnc and DVD-Lab for 30 days free. I think Mediachance also works with Promotion on a deal for an editor.

But any editor that edits DV-AVI (AVI Type 2) files and outputs AVI files is great.

My editor will input DV, edit, output to DVD with VBR and AC3 (only single pass though - but a good one). It will also natively edit MPEG2 and MPEG-2 Long GOP. But look to spend from $500 up (Vegas 6, Edius, Liquid Edition, Premiere Pro 1.51, Avid Xpress HD, etc.)

 

[Ragz]

0.1% loss should not be a problem. These are only home videos so I can live with 0.1% loss. I am not a techie, so can someone explain step by step how this is done, and whats the simplest path to it.?

Thanks,
Anurag

 

[Ragz]

I could buy a larger HDD. This wont be an issue. I was hoping that things would be much simpler. How much time do you reckon one conversion from miniDV -DVD would take? Several hours? Or tens of hours?

Anurag

 

[cambo357]

it seems as if you are going to have to spend some money, no matter how you look at it.

for a HDD, you will need plenty of space, as you already learned. DV footage takes up approx. 13GB per hour. while editing, you will need more room for temp and finished files. I would recommend 200GB or more. luckily, HDD storage is very cheap these days. check the hot deals section for, er, some hot deals.

timewise, it will depend on how much you are doing, and how powerful your computer is. when you capture from a camcorder, it is in real time, so 40 minutes of movie will take 40 minutes to capture. then all the editing, transcoding, etc. figure on a few hours per hour of original movie you are working with.

if you can spend a bit more than what a cheap HDD is, and want simplicity, a stand alone set top DVD recorder should work. they can be had for as little as $100, and up to alot more. even the cheap ones have mini firewire in, perfect for your camcorder. you could also use the composite cables that you hook up the camcorder to a TV with, but there will be a loss of quality. this recording is also done in realtime, plus a few extra minutes to finish the DVD in the recorder. it really is about the most trouble free way to do this, but you have less options as to what you can do to the video (titles, transitions, etc.). do some research of reviews and user experiences with them before you buy. videohelp.com has good info, as well as some guides for you.

-Cambo

 

[Ragz]

A dvd recorder sounds like what the doctor ordered. I couldnt be bothered with titles and transtions at the moment. I just want to see the video on TV. It would be cool to edit them as well, but I will give that a shot in some time by getting the larger HDD too. Thanks for the advice guys. I will come back in here later with some more Q's.

Anurag