best video formats for capture->editing->burn to dvd

[Guest]

My wife and just bought a digital video camera (DV) with the intention of
burning our home videos to DVD. We've been converting VHS to DVD for a year
now so we are pretty comfortable with the digital editing and burning
process. My question is, what is the best format for capturing from our DV
camera -> editing video -> burning to DVD?

We've been capturing to DV-AVI fearing that if we used anything else, we
would lose quality. Besides massive filesizes, editing is sluggish even on a
P4 3.2 GHz with 1 gig of RAM. The filesizes don't bother me as much as the
sluggish video editing (video/audio jumps and skips during playback making
previewing virtually impossible). Quality loss is not an option. Will using
the microsoft compressed file formats (.wmv) result in lowered quality when
it is finally burned to DVD? What format would be best for what we want to
do? Thanks!

 

[Guest]

First I'll assume you have a firewire setup as you are capturing to DV-AVI.
Keep on doing what your doing. Capture as DV-AVI with the digital camcorder.
Wojo on this board I believe was the one who tested DV-AVI vs. .wmv and
concluded DV-AVI still the way to go.

Just some things to try. Since you have been doing some editing and burning,
be sure to defragment your hard drive well. I use Perfect Disk which also
defragments the free space (unlike XPs defrag tool). If by chance you are
capturing to a second drive, make sure the transfer mode is Ultra DMA 5 and
hasn't been reduced for some reason. Disable your internet when you are
capturing and editing. I find my preview can get jumpy and slow if I play the
movie I am making and then try to slide the bar around too much. It corrects
itself if I hit Stop and then continue. Your system seems comparable to mine
(you have more RAM) and I have really no issues with capturing, editing or
burning. Might just need a good tune-up.

Steve