I finally built a real HTPC with a 4 TB raid array and copied all my Hi8 digital home video onto the computer so I can easily view them and convert to DVDs for the grandparents to watch.

The camera is a Sony DCR-TRV340 that is about 6 years old. I have been using Nero Vision (version 5, latest) to convert the movies to DVDs.

I am somewhat disappointed in the quality of the results. Even though I set the bitrate at 8 Mbps (pretty high, isn't it?) it seems that the results are still fairly inferior to the original camera DVI video when I view it on my Samsung LCD HDTV. Yes, the original files are 12 GB instead of 4 GB, but still . . .

Is Nerovision using a decent encoder? I do use the two-pass "high quality" encoding method. Would I get better results using a better encoder? Am I just seeing the limitations of MPEG2 and/or this camera? I must say the original DVI video looks pretty darn good for standard def.

Also, I think I set Nero Vision to "progressive". Could this cause problems? The camera video is 480i60 is it not?

One other question: I notice the Sony DCR-TRV340 has a setting for widescreen (16:9) format, which I have just started using. When I first got the camera years ago I did not have a widescreen HDTV so most of my videos are 4:3.

Will I be losing vertical resolution by using this setting, or is the camera sophisticated enough that it does something similar to anamorphic DVDs where all the information is there for either 4:3 or 16:9? I checked both aspect ratios using Gspot Codec Identifier, and both are listed as 720 X 480, but the aspect ratios are shown as different.

All encoders are not the same. I have been using Sony Vegas editing software for 5 years which uses the Main Concept encoder. Unfortunately the Sony trial software will not encode to MPEG2 because of license issues.

I have no experience with Nerovision, and I have never heard anything about their encoder.

Commercial standard DVD's use MPEG2 encoding, so with a good encoder and proper settings you can get good results.

Sony DCR-TRV340 is a Digital8 Camcorder. As I recall, one of the good ones, but I do not know how it actually handles 4:3 vs 16:9, however they are both 720*480 pixels for the NTSC models.

The TRV340 is technically NTSC 29.97 frames per second Interlaced. Which is called "480i60" in the High Definition world.

The problem with encoders, is there are many non obvious settings and too many combinations. For standard DVD's normally you leave the video intelaced. To view on a computer monitor, you encode Progressive, however for computer viewing I use .WMV which works out better. Like I said, I have never used Nerovision. So I don't know what it does.



Rich