Posted by youarehappyhey on 02/09/07 06:37

Hey all,

Just gotta vent here and ask for help with DVD burning from all of you
experts in these newsgroups. All I've wanted to do is transfer some
old home movies on VHS and 8mm video camcorder tape. I've been
running the outputs from the VCR or camcorder to a Dazzle Digital
Video Creator 150. In order to hopefully enhance the video quality, I
run the video output through a GoDVD video enhancer between the VCR/
camcorder output and the Dazzle input. The Dazzle then inputs into my
computer which is a:

Dell Dimension Desktop 4700
3.4 GHz Pentium 4 processor
16X DVD+/-R/RW (Phillips DVD burner)
1 GB DDR2 SDRAM at 400 MHz
250 GB hard drive
Operating System is Windows XP Media Center

My computer came with Sonic MyDVD software for burning video and data
DVDs. The Dazzle video digitizer also came with Pinnacle Studio 9
Quickstart, which allows video clips to be edited and output as
various types of files. My media of choice is Delkin eFilm Archival
Gold DVD-R. I have given up trying to make video DVDs because they
were riddled with various problems. Instead, I've decided to make DVD-
compatible MPEG files and store them on data DVDs. At least I can
reliably make data DVDs which I can verify as being exact copies of
the MPEG files burned.

Unfortunately, I have a series of problems in the created MPEG files,
pre-burning. First of all, Studio 9 Quickstart seems to force me to
double-encode my MPEG files. The reason this happens is as follows:
The capture step only allows me to save my initially captured video
from the Dazzle video digitizer as MPEG files. These initial MPEG
files look better than the finished ones, but I don't want to burn
these initial MPEGs onto DVD because they need to be edited and
trimmed such that blank tape captured at the beginning and end of the
tape can be edited out. Well, after I drag the initial MPEG file to
the storyboard in edit mode and trim the ends, I then have to use the
Make MPEG function in the Make Movie step to make a new MPEG with the
edits. The Make MPEG settings allows me to set a quality level of the
output edited MPEG, such as DVD-compatible, which leads me to believe
the program is re-encoding the edited MPEG, which seems rather
pointless as it is already an MPEG file. The re-encoding seems to
make the picture jerkier in the edited MPEGS, especially when the
camera moves. Isn't there a way I can just trim the beginning and end
of an MPEG file, without re-encoding the middle of it and altering the
resulting video quality? I can't seem to find a way of doing so on
Pinnacle Studio 9 Quickstart.

In addition, even some of my initially captured video MPEG files have
problems. The frames seem to be flickery and jerky at times. My
Pinnacle capture settings are MPEG (high-quality DVD) (6000 Kbits/
sec). I was wondering if maybe this is too high of a quality setting
for my computer to keep up with? If so, what would be a better
quality-level, in terms of bit rate, in light of my processing power.

I have tried everything I can think of to try to fix the above
problems, including updating Studio 9 Quickstart, Sonic MyDVD, and my
DVD burner driver, turning off my screensaver, emptying my recycle bin
and temporary files before burning, turning off my power saving
settings, checking my system for viruses, running my disk
defragmenter, not running any other applications while using my video
software, and restarting my computer right before using my video
software. Nothing seems to work.

I can't understand why I can't get this stuff to make simple MPEG
files for burning on data DVDs which are quality representations of
their respective videos. Is this technology not perfected or what?
All I have read indicates that my system should be perfectly capable
of doing all that. I've looked at other software video digitizing
equipment, but if you go on amazon.com, it seems like every such
product has highly mixed reviews, even Nero software, which seemed to
be the most highly respected video software on these newsgroups. If I
just knew what hardware and software and settings that could reliably
do what I want, I would happily try to purchase and use them.

I tried technical support from Dell, Sonic, and Pinnacle, but am still
having problems.

I'm so frustrated, I'm just about ready to give up on my whole
archiving project, which I was really looking forward to. What is
going wrong here, and how can I fix it? I tried to provide as much
information as I could for anyone willing to give an opinion or
advice.

Thank you very much in advance.

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