Expert Advise/Mini DV to DVD Quality Control!!!

[dznutz1]

Hello all. Far from an expert. I thought once "digital" the quality of the source could not change. Well I have a Sony Mini DV camcorder TRV-17 that I recorded footage one with a brand new tape, quality is great during playback.
When I link the camcorder up to my computer and through firewire on my windows xp system, i get a prompt to make a dvd with either windows movie maker 2, ulead dvd movie factory 2 or sonic my dvd that my pioneer ao4 came with.
I recently used "record dvd project" w/ ulead dvd movie factory 2, edited, etc and the quality was pretty good, close to source, but not exact.
Then I tried using TMPGEnc to convert the mpeg ulead movie maker 2 saved into mpeg 2 and the burned quality was MUCH worse, worse than VHS.
I haven't tried comparing to making a wmv file w/ windows movie maker 2, then converting to mpeg2 w/ Tmpenc yet, etc, but I assume same results?
I thought if the source is good, once onto your hard drive, etc and digital, the source can't get worse, but it did?!
Has anyone else had this happen? More importantly, can anyone suggest the BEST method of taking footage from a mini DV tape and uploading it to your computer so you can burn onto a blank DVD with the same quality of the source? PLEASE advise.

[Jazz]

You are right: the quality of the source does not change. You can transfer from your camcorder to the PC without degradation using DVIO or other programs (see stickies).

If you start taking it to DVD though, you convert your AVI to MPEG2, and this is where the degradation you've seen creeps in. There's many factors and program-specific settings that can impact the quality of your MPEG2 encode.

[bb]

dznutz1 must have posted this thread twice accidentally. Please continue in the other thread.

Closed.

bb