[fishwishy]

Hi,

I've got a JVC GR-DX95EK Mini DV camcorder, and I want to transfer all my MiniDV tapes to DVD. I've used Windows Movie Maker and CyberLink PowerProducer and both give me a "capture" function and they will churn out an avi or mpeg file.

My question is, when it says "capture", does that mean screen grab the image being played, or is it taking the digital signal via firewire and dumping that into the avi? If it is screen grabbing, is it possible to extract the digital data from the tape to get the best possible picture?

Thanks,

Mark

[senu]

Originally Posted by fishwishy

Hi,

I've got a JVC GR-DX95EK Mini DV camcorder, and I want to transfer all my MiniDV tapes to DVD. I've used Windows Movie Maker and CyberLink PowerProducer and both give me a "capture" function and they will churn out an avi or mpeg file.

My question is, when it says "capture", does that mean screen grab the image being played, or is it taking the digital signal via firewire and dumping that into the avi?

"Capture" in reference to MiniDV tape refers to the real time transfer ( streaming) of the data on the miniDv tape by firewire to the PC or Mac
Screengrabs mean just that.. Getting a still from any frame off video file ( AVI) which is infact a series of rapidly displayed frames. This occurs on the PC while using a software media player or video editing software

If it is screen grabbing, is it possible to extract the digital data from the tape to get the best possible picture?

It is not screen grabbing and a DV AVI is the data on the tape at its best quality
I don't believe the capture programs are identical ( they should be) but the DV AVI off Windows movie maker seems not to be identical to that off say Cyberlinks
If you get an mpeg, you are getting a file whih has been encoded off the DV AVI on the tape and the mpeg is really only supposed to be produced after editng
Try WIN DV it is a small free program which you can also capture with
Other video Editing programs like Sony Vegas Movie Studio ect may also help with capture and in my experience result in much better DV AVI files