Best format for Video Quality?

[The Assman]

I have a analog camcorder that I've been capturing all my old home movies
from. I'm saving them to my Media Center Edition PC, which has a 165 GB hard
drive plus burner, so space is NOT a concern.

I'm interested in best video quality with largest picture/resolution:

1) Is the WMV format I'm saving to the best video quality possible?
(Remember, I'm not expecting great quality seeing that I'm coming from a 8mm
analog camera.)

2) Do I need to convert the WMV's to some other format for them to play on
modern DVD players?

3) What is the size per minute (Mb/minute) ratio on the most common formats,
say mpeg2, avi, and wmv?

Any advice?

 

[Randy]

What kind of capture device are you using and is it able to save as MPEG 1
and /or MPEG 2? If it is, all you need is editing, authoring and possible
shrink programs. If not, and you can only save to WMV, then you will have to
convert those files to MPEG 1 or MPEG 2 in order to burn to DVD.

 

[The Assman]

I have a Dazzle 80 USB capture device. Yes, it does come with MovieStar 5
software.

I guess what I'm really asking is: Does the WMV format keep the same image
quality as MPEG or the others? Although space is not really a factor, if WMV
have every bit the quality of an MPEG (or others) and I'm interested in
keeping them forever, then WMV or MPEG are OK?

 

[JJ]

Not sure if this is exactly applicable to your situation
but when I archive movies from my digital mini-DV camera,
I capture them on my PC as a DV/AVI file. They are quite
large but loose no quality. If I want to make a DVD to
play with a DVD player on the TV, I convert to a MPeg2
format and burn. This is about 1/10 the size.