Minidv 2 Dvd - Is It Any Good???

I am thinking of investing in the Panasonic PV-GS120 but how good is it when you transfer from minidv onto dvd? if my reading is correct, the best way to do it is to use ulead video studio 9, but how much high quality video does it fit onto a 4.2GB disc, i dont want to pay for dual layer discs and i cannot see the point of me buying the camera if i can only store 30mins of high quality video on dvd, am i best just going for a dvd camcorder???

the more replies/views the better,

thanks

Danny

[ptek]

Well, DVD Camcorder use small disc (30 mins dvd Q), normal DVD disc 1 hr DVD recording, longer if want less quality though.

DV export to PC is no loss if project set to DV quality, at least, once on PC you can do all sorts of things to your movie, ie. cut the crap out !

A few post's are around on the pro's and con's of DVD camera, but if uneditted capture, direct from DVC to DVD recorder is the fastest

[melliott1963]

You can fit 1 hour of high quality video onto a standard DVD, slightly more if you use variable bit rate to compress instead of constant bit rate. The problem with DVD Camcorders is many, including the lack of storage space on a disk. Also the footage is stored in compressed format, so immediately you're going to lose some quality, whereas this is not the case with MiniDV.

I wouldn't say the best way is to use ulead video studio 9. It is one of many packages that are available to use. There's also Sony Vegas Movie Studio (reliable, easy to use), Microsoft Movie Maker 2 (free as part of XP), Pinnacle Studio (great when it works, irritating when it doesn't!) and several more at the lower consumer end. Then you've got Adobe Premier and Sony Vegas at the 'pro-sumer' end of the scale which, being more professional editing programs could be called 'the best'.

Hope this helps.

so the best way is to get a minidv camcorder, then transfer onto a dvd, and i should be able to get an hour of high quality footage onto a single disc?

thanks

ps is there a better camera for less money than the panasonic, i want a good one that will perform well in low light, indoor footage ang garden at dusk etc. thr panasonic seemed to me to be the cheapest that performs really well.

thanks again

[MarkE19]

You 'should' be able to get up to around 2 hours of footage onto a DVD before you start to see too much of a drop in PQ. But a lot will depend on the program used to do the MPEG encoding. Like all things, there are good and bad programs out there for DVD authoring.
All of the programs mentioned by melliott1963 are very good. As mentioned though Pinacle Studio is likely to crash on you and therefore could be more trouble than it is worth. But when working is an excellent program with loads of features. Also consider Ulead Video Studio 9 as this is also very good, and very stable. The current favourite on this forum looks to be Vegus Studio for the budget user who needs something easy to learn, but with enough features to still be useing in the future. Movie Maker 2 is very good for a free program, but it will not create any kind of output that is playable on anything other than your PC. To create a VCD or DVD you will need other programs.

Mark.