Posted by Ken Maltby on 09/01/06 18:37

"Doc" <docsavage20@xhotmail.xom> wrote in message
news:ibSJg.1298$v%4.539@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net...
> Exploring this mpeg capture option, is there anything to be gained by
> capturing tape that was recorded in DV - Dig8 in this case - and capturing
> as mpeg2 via Firewire?
>
> Pinnacle Studio gives a max bitrate of 8200 kbits/sec which it seems to
> handle fine. Under Power Director, which came along with a Turtle Beach
> Video Advantage capture card, there are more options, though I don't know
> if
> this is necessarily useful or not, the maxed out rate is apparently too
> much
> for this P4 2.4 gig machine as I get intermittent choppiness in the
> resulting video, even though it does it on a non-realtime buffered basis
> and
> continues encoding for several minutes longer.
>
> If there's no advantage of capturing DV as mpeg2, when or why would you
> use
> mpeg2 capture?
>
> Thanks.
>

Capturing an Analog video signal directly to DVD compliant
MPEG has a number of advantages. Most of them relate to
the time involved going from the analog source to a DVD, and
the optimized hardware processing. A major consideration is
also that multiple encoding of compressed sources is avoided.

Transferring Digital Video to your hard drive is only the first
step in the processing such material requires. You essentially
have the same thing as was on your camera, it's just now on
your hard drive where you can manipulate it.

There is still some advantage to doing the initial processing
in the DV format, (image stabilization, color correction) and
some editing procedures are more available and cost less.
For this reason if you have material that hasn't already been
professionally processed and edited, (your camcorder tapes)
then you should use the common DV-AVI format(s) to do
those steps before converting your video to a more usable
format like DVD compliant MPEG.

If the material has already been professionally edited then
the manipulation required can be easily accomplished in the
DVD compliant MPEG format, including adding titles and
transitions as well as frame accurate cuts and joins. This
is unlikely, (that your DV would have already been edited)
so there is limited benefit to doing an encoding to MPEG
while transferring DV via Firewire.

HDV is a different matter, and even your DV could be
processed as high bitrate MPEG2, but you would need
a much more powerful system and or hardware assistance
to do many of the more CPU intensive processes. You
could do some Main Profile (DVD) MPEG2 editing on
your current system, but there is no reason to, when you
have the DV available.

Luck;
Ken

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