Poor Quality from Analog Video to DVD

[Guest]

I recently purchased a computer with a DVD burner and I'm trying to transfer
all my old 8mm video tapes to DVD. I purchased a Dazzle Hollywood DV-Bridge
that seems to work fine and have Sonic DVD Plus pre-installed on the computer.
When I tried to do the "direct to disc" option, the video was very jerky and
lost frames. The only way I have found to be able to do it is to import the
tape to Movie Maker, divide it in half into two separate movies, then burn
the projects on Sonic. This all works fine, with the exception that the
final product when watched on TV is nowhere near the quality of the original
tape. I don't really care how long the process takes as I know it will take
a while, however, is there a way to improve the quality so that I am at least
close to the original?

Thanks for any suggestions.

 

[Cari \(MS-MVP\)]

Try to import it to another third party software.... and while you're
importing, walk away from the PC.... don't use it for doing anything else.

 

[Guest]

Are there any third party programs you can recommend?

 

[Cari \(MS-MVP\)]

Did you try your already installed Sonic MyDVD..... ?

There's also Roxio, Nero, PowerDirector, WinDVD Creator..... I've used all
of them..... I probably use Roxio 7.5 and 8 and WinDVD Creator the most on
my desktop and PowerDirector the most on my husband's desktop....

 

[Meathead]

I have tried Sonic and Ulead and Pinnacle Studios and I like Pinnacle the
best. I would definately avoid direct to disk at all costs. Wat format
are you doing your original capture to and what frame rate and resolution?
This can make a huge difference as it is not possible for you end result to
be better than original capture.

 

[Guest]

I use Windows Movie Maker at the High Quality Video (NTSC) setting.
Resolution is 720 x 480 @ 30 frames per second. I believe it is the highest
capture rate available in Movie Maker. I then save it as a movie in the same
format and import it into My DVD Plus by Sonic and burn the DVD from there.
Am I losing information between the programs?

 

[Graham Hughes]

Save as a dv-avi in movie maker. This si the highest quality.
The quality drop will be in the encoding to mpeg for dvd. The more you spend
on an encoder the better the results will be.

--
Graham Hughes
MVP Digital Media
www.myvideoproblems.co.uk
www.dvds2treasure.com
www.simplydv.com