Well, because of my problem described
Here

I am going to have to settle for MPEG captures with my ATI All-in-wonder. Which is what I wanted to be able to do ultimately anyway in order to save time.

I have a few questions and concerns about the process that I'm hoping you can help me with. I've followed the settings you outline Here
for converting either dv tapes to dvd or 8mm tapes to dvd using a dv camera (svideo & RCA Audio via All-in-wonder card) or 8mm camera (composite video via All-in-wonder).
One exception to your recomendations that I have taken is that I am capturing 720x480. I have also increased the bitrate to 8 MBit/Second.

Generally speaking I have become satisfied with the results accept for a few things that I'd like to correct. the quality seems fine with up close video of people and indoor scenes but video of outdoor scenes (trees, plants, etc) that are jumpy and show a lot of movement are poor quality and come across as blurry and seemingly pixelated. It also seems that in some areas of the video there is some "vibration". This seems to happen at places where the lighting conditions in the video are in sharp contrast, ie at windows, bright spots etc. It's almost as you describe in your "understanding your source" section where you show one image that has a drop field de-interlace. I am capturing interlaced so I don't think that that is the problem. And it's really not that bad but I don't remember seeing that when I would capture to avi and convert to mpeg via premier as described Here

Some other miscelleneous questions I have are:

1- can I expect to get the same quality by capturing directly to mpeg via the ATI-All-IN-Wonder as I did through ilink (firewire) to AVI then to Mpeg via Main Concept encoder (premiere)?

2- Is Mini DV source interlaced? I'm assuming that it is.


Thanks for your help.

Jared


- ishmot

Your biggest problem with pixelation on jumpy footage is a combination of the camera and the MPEG technology. MPEG compression is partially temporal (time-based) compresson between frames, and when you frames move too much, the compression is less effective. Less effective compression requires more bitrate. The general rule of thumb is you can only put 1 hour of handheld DV onto DVD, when captured direct to MPEG (using capture card or DVD recorder). Transferring DV to computer lets you encode manually, which has more opprortunity to create more precise video compression. Even then, bitrate needed. Max it out, 9800k, one hour per disc.

Your DV transfer (WinDV), to Adobe inport and edit, to the MainConcept MPEG encoder export, should look better than on-the-fly MPEG capture. At least with DV containing high motion (which include handheld shakes).

Mini DV is interlaced. Jitter makes interlace lines more obvious, even on an interlaced display.