Is it possible to transfer my DV tapes to my PC and burn a DVD without the huge drop off in quality? I'm using a Canon Elura 100 DV. I don't want to keep buying and storing tapes, and would like ot transfer my movies to DVD, but what I've done so far look like garbage, very grainy and lo-res. Nothing like playing the tapes back through the camera directly to the TV. I have a few software programs, like Power Producer, etc. Windows XP won't burn DVDs (dumbest thing ever). I've tried ripping the DV tapes in the native avi format, but that makes a HUGE file. I need help, thanks!

You should be able to that with the drop in video quality being barely noticeable. But it is reduced so you don't ever want to re-use your MiniDV video tapes. Keep them as your archive in case you want to do a different edit sometime in the future. They don't take up much room and you will regret the day that you erase them.

Your captured video should be identical to what is on your tape. The transfer is digital, bit for bit UNLESS you used USB. You MUST use your firewire port. If your computer doesn't have a firewire port you will need to add one.

The people who own the MPEG2 CODEC want money for the use of it. Microsoft is not going to shell out the big bucks to provide it to people that will never use it. So that is why XP won't make MPEG2 recordings. You will have to buy a DVD Authoring package that will convert your captured AVI files to MPEG2 files.

AVI files occupy 13 GB for 1 hour of video. Get used to it because that is the way it is. Large hard drives are dirt cheap. Don't think you can erase your AVI files unless you save your master tapes. You can't reverse the compression from MPEG2 back to AVI without losing a lot of video quality. After your AVI files are compressed to MPEG2 they take up about 2 GB for 1 hour of decent quality video. That is the compression ratio I use for all of my DVD's because it looks the same as the original video on my 32" Sony TV. If you have a HDTV you might want to use the best quality setting of about 4GB for 1 hour of MPEG2 video.

Dave

I use Sony Vegas 6 platinum and DVD architect (which was bundled with it for me) to transfer and burn to DVD my min-dv footage from both a Sony HC3 HD cam and a Sony HC90 SD cam. I burn my footage to a dual layer DVD and get nice widescreen footage and barely any loss in quality from the original. Unfortunately the footage needs to be compressed and re-rendered in order to fit on comsumer DVD's barring BL and HD dscs. However Sony's software does an excellent job at this and like I said i am satisfied with the results depsite the compression of the regular footage and you should notice no difference in quality.

I second bhbest's words. There is a high learning curve to Sony, though.

I have also used Ulead's VideoStudio 9 with good results. The disc length shouldn't be more than an hour or so. And keep compression above 8000.
I don't like Ulead due to occasional rendering stopages. (I was always able to complete the task but it can be frustrating.)

I'll third the Sony suite but it's an expensive option for home videos. TMPGenc might me cheaper though less user friendly than even Sony's software. As long as you're getting a clean capture (which is easy with DV over firewire) then it's all a matter of how good your MPEG2 compressor can do its job.

DaveC, you said:

Your captured video should be identical to what is on your tape. The transfer is digital, bit for bit UNLESS you used USB. You MUST use your firewire port. If your computer doesn't have a firewire port you will need to add one.

Can you please explain why there would be loss if using USB as opposed to FireWire?

I'm new to the forum, so please excuse my ignorance.

Can you please explain why there would be loss if using USB as opposed to FireWire?
Camcorders only operate at 1 speed (full). The data coming off of a MiniDV tape is more than the speed that a USB port can operate at. Therefore some of the video will be lost (dropped frames). Firewire is the only digital port that is fast enough to handle all of the video data. USB2 is fast enough but most camcorders aren't designed to use USB2.

If there was handshaking between the camcorder and computer which told the camcorder to wait before sending the next data bit until the previous one had been received then USB could be used. But camcorders can't listen for a computer to tell them the computer is ready to receive the next data bit. The camcorder just keeps on sending, ready or not. What overflows the USB port is lost.

The last couple of years there are a hand full of MiniDV camcorders that can operate at USB2 speed, but don't count on yours being one of the few. Firewire ports are cheap. Get one and use it. Besides, some video capture programs automatically just look for video coming in on the firewire port. They won't even look at the USB port if you try to use it.

Dave