help with converting DV to SVCD, best method?

[warder]

I got new jvc minidv digital vid cam for xmas, and i want to take the video from it and make some svcds, maybe even with menus. What firewire card should i get based on your guys experience, i got a kw-582v2 but its not working in XP. Now once i have that working I want to find the best solution for the process for pulling the video off and creating svcds out of it. I am plenty familiar with dvd2svcd, I've been using it sucessesfully for some time now. Figured I could get the best answer to this problem from some of you guys since you probably already went through it.

Thanks

[puffy01]

yeah, id like to find out what the best way is to convert DV to SVCD. personally, i dont think that the firewire card matters that much, because you still get the same thing in the end =D

[24hourloop]

It's a pain in the neck. I have hassled with this to no end only to find the *only* solution that works well:

a.) Capture as usual.
b.) Use Adobe Premiere and choose the DV template.
c.) Do *not* use any funky filters such as even color adjust etc. Also certain transitions will screw with your pic since Premiere will deinterlace under the covers. Good transitions like Hollywood are perfectly NTSC aware and will preserve proper interlacing, if possible.
d.) Export with 'Lower field first' using the video server plugin. Do not change aspect ratio and the like.
e.) Use TMPGENC to compress (I had little to no luck getting CCE to work right). Under Advanced Settings use 'Lower field' or something along those lines for field order. Use the *FULL* NTSC settings, *not* 704x480. This is important.
f.) Encode.

The above process is the *only* process I have been able to use to

a.) Properly preserve the interlacing.
b.) Achieve acceptable quality.

This works since the scan lines are converted 1 to 1.

Things I have tried that did not work well:

Mediastudio Pro with Ligos - Either deinterlaced it or somehow screwed up the interlacing. I have not been able to discern why the interlacing was not properly preserved. And I have tried every setting in the book.

Premiere with Ligos (both the full and packaged versions). Same as above.

CCE plugin for Premiere. Probably the worst result.

I have manually changed the flags int he files for field orders using utilities, anything in the book, you name it.

Now for the catch:

You CANNOT see on your monitor playback whether you got things right or not. Your software player *always* performs deinterlacing during playback for you. As such in many cases you will not find out until you actually pop it into the standalone and try to watch it on your TV.

This from someone that has stayed up nights and wasted many CDs trying to make it work right.

[Faceman101]

Basicly 24hourloop cleared things up easily. Once you capture your video you have to edit and do what you like, export to new DV file, and load into TMPGEnc. The settings 24hourloop mentioned are correct but make sure you set encoding to Highest Quality (slowest). In some cases you make have to deinterlace since DV is interlaced. When I encode my DV clips to MPEG, I use an edited DVD template in TMPGEnc and the results when I export to TV are 1:1. But making a back-up of your movies and wanting to show off in a DVD player, SVCD is recommended over VCD. Good luck.

If you're familar with frameserving and found a copy of CCE, I suggest using that for time saving purposes.