Poor Quality of DVD

[Bill]

I am having problems with the quality of the finished DVD after the WMM
finishes saving it. I have no problem capturing my analog source, the
editing goes well and in the preview window the clips look very sharp,
as good as the original. The problem looks to be occuring when I save to
the computer. I am saving the file as a AVI file, it's very large. When
I start the burn using MY DVD I first look at the preview of the video
and it has lost a great deal of quality. I have competed the burn to
make sure that is what I will get and that's what I get, poor video.
What am I doing wrong???????

 

[NoNoBadDog!]

You are capturing from an analog source, and encoding the signal twice. The
resultant file is at best third generation. Given the low quality of analog
source, it is not at all surprising that the result is not very high
quality.

Bobby

 

[Bill]

Yes, but once it's captured and I am in the editing stage, isn't digital
and shouldn't the final burn be as good as the editing stage or am I
missing something? Thanks for the reply....

 

[NoNoBadDog!]

Bill;

If only it were so...

Transco of Video and Audio does indeed introduce changes into the actual
video data itself. Depending upon the circumstances, the amount can vary
from "lossless" to quite lossy. Anytime you introduce compression into the
picture (and DVD compliant MPEG-2 does use compression), you begin to
degrade the final product. The only way to avoid this is to capture in a
fairly lossless format like DV-AVI, edit it, and then save the changes
without re-compressing the video.

In the scenario you presents, you have several layers to deal with;

Analog Signal > Analog Capture Device (introduced compression) > Digital
Date File (introduced compression) > Edit > Save Edited Material (introduced
compression) > Convert to MPEG-2 (introduced compression).

Bobby

 

[Rehan]

It is indeed strange that you are getting poor quality when you save the
movie in DV AVI format. As Bobby says the several conversion steps involved
do compromise quality but the using DV AVI should reduce it for this step at
least...

What is on your system? SP2 installed yet ? If not do so.

Try now.

If not fixed, reinstall latest version of DirectX and Media Player.

I suspect your DV Codec may have been hijacked by some other program. The
above steps should fix it.

 

[Bill]

Have not installed SP2 yet, it's sitting on my desk. I will and then
retry, thanks.
Bill