Power Producer for Capturing and Burning

[Goober11]

My new PC came pre-installed with the above software and it seems to work well. My question is this, it captures my home DV and burns to dvd without any mention of avi or conversion is this normal? I read somewhere on here that you need to capture in avi format to ensure good quality. The issue is that I can capture on 3 formats, best quality for 60 mins, standard quality for 120 and basic for 180. The problem is that the 120 and 180 quality is not great and does not look like the original on the tape, is this normal or should I try different software?

Thanks

[Goober11]

Anyone?

[Brian110507]

How is your camera connected to your PC - does it use USB or Firewire - if you tell us that then I might be able to suggest what to do or maybe some alternatives.

[Goober11]

My dv cam is connected to my pc via firewire - it does not seem to pick up the cam via usb. Firewire is supposed to be the best connection anyway (inc usb2) isn't it?

[Brian110507]

Don't know your particular editing programme but if you are capturing by firewire then you are almost certainly capturing .avi and your editing programme does the conversion when you burn to disc. After you have captured you should be able to find the files on your hard disc and should be able to see straight away if they are .avi or .mpg.

[Goober11]

I am confused because on my first effort I used Windows MM and it capture on avi and it used about about 20+ gig whereas using PowerProducer it only used about 8 to capture the same amount of video i.e. 90 mins.

[MarkE19]

Some editing programs can capture footage directly as MPEG compressed files to save disk space, which it sounds like for your software. This is great if you are short of disk space but it will result in a greater loss of quality when editing.
MPEG compression can have different settings for differing quality but with the added advantage of getting more footage onto a disk. the 60, 120 & 180 minutes settings just sound like presets for the MPEG compression to me. This takes the worry of getting all the setting correct yourself by just offering the 3 options via a menu.

Mark.

[Goober11]

OK Mark, so should i use a different programme to capture and burn my home video or am I unlikely to get much better results using something like ulead?

[MarkE19]

It really depends on what you want/need to do.
If all you want is to get exactly what you have filmed onto a DVD without too many edits & transitions etc then there seems to be no point in spending more money.
If however you want to add background music, titles, transitions, play around with slow motion etc etc then you are going to need to buy an editing package that will capture as AVI.
The chances are you will want to do something between the 2 above options, so you could stick with what you have for now and see if you are happy with the results you get, assuming of course that you can do what you want with the software. Once you have some experience and know more about what you can or can't do you can then shop arounf for a software upgrade. Don't just spend money for the sake of it - wait until you know what you need! The chances are that if you wait to get what you know will have the functions you require you will end up spending less money. 2 upgrades of say £50 each and you may still need to spend more, but take time and do a single £100 upgrade and you should end up with a very good all singing, all danceing package.

Mark.

[Goober11]

Thanks mark, but all I want is quality as good as the dv tape quality and i am not getting it with Power producer so can i get better quality with different software?

[MarkE19]

By the sound of it the MPEG encoder in your software is not very good. This is no real surprise with bundled software.
The 2 products that are fairly cheap and many people on here are happy with the results they give are Ulead VideoStudio 8 & Pinnacle Studio 9 and the good news is that you can get free trial downloads of these programs. Just go to http://www.pinnaclesys.com & www.ulead.co.uk

Mark.