Capture to MPEG2 on the fly

[ripper2004]

Hi all,

I have a question, that's probably simple for you to answer.

All these days I used the classical video transfer process for my miniDV tapes ...
miniDV -> DVAVI -> MPEG2 -> DVD

I noticed that softwares now (ex: nero vision) have a capture template (MPEG2). [This might not be a new development, but, I was rather blindly following the classical process :(]
So looks like instead of wasting time and disk space to do encoding, I can simply do the following now ...
miniDV -> MPEG2 -> DVD

Now. what are the pros and cons of this process? Quality is affected?
I dont have any hardware capture cards, just plain firewire cable.
My end goal is to watch my movies on DVD.

thanks in advance!

[JohnnyMalaria]

If you simply want to go MiniDV->DVD without any editing etc, you can use an external DVD recorder. Many have FireWire input for direct connection to your camcorder.

This approach is painless - no software to worry about.

As for the direct to MPEG2 capture, you have to gauge the quality differences since it really is subjective. Any realtime encoding will inevitably have to sacrifice some quality compared to off-line encoding.

[bb]

If you don't care for quality, but want the extra speed, then you may well capture to MPEG-2 directly. A good software solution is MainConcept MPEG Encoder, which comes with a DV (and analogue, too) capture module.

You still need the authoring step, though, so JohnnyMalaria's hardware solution is the fastest one.

bb

[ripper2004]

hi. thanks for the replies.

Well, i surely would do editing on my videos.
only thing iam looking to avoid is the 2hr encoding from AVI to MPEG2. More importantly, my question was aimed toward knowing whether ppl prefer doing this or not.

Is it noticeable quality drop? If its within 5% iam OK with direct capture to MPEG2.
I guess i should try it out myself too, by capturing some 1min and see for myself!

[bb]

If you want to edit after capturing, then keep the DV AVI, else you'll lose quality, and editing will be much more of a hassle.

bb