How do I capture in DV format ?

[saggio]

I have a Sony DV camcorder connected with firewire to PC.
I have MyDVD, ShowBiz and Ulead VideoStudio 5.
All 3 of the above programs seems to be able to capture from DV generating an MPEG-2 file. I cannot seem to be able to generate a DV file.
Also, creating the .mpg file, I lose the date/time info on the original DV signal and cannot do scene recognition by time.

Questions:
1) do I need to create a DV file in order to have a better quality final product (burning to DVD)?
2) can I use a DV file so generated for video editing (e.g. with Showbiz)
3) what is the extention of a DV file?

Thanks for your help.

[MarkE19]

1) Any video captured via a firewire connection will be in DV format. MPEG-2 is the correct format for copying to DVD.
2) If your editing programme is designed for editing a DV file, then just capture and edit. Some programmes are analogue only, but these are few and far between.
3) Now I'm lost. Don't remember But remember a DV file is only the video, the sound is a separate file.

Mark.

[saggio]

Mark, thanks.

the file resulting from a my captures is an .mpg (MPEG-2). You said in another thread that if you capture in "raw" DV format you will have approx 4mins for 1GB. The MPEG files that results from my captures are much smaller (since they are compressed)

My problem is that doing so, the software will have to encode in MPEG-2 in real-time, while the tape is playing. Do you not sacrifice quality doing this?

Would it not be better to transfer first to a "DV" format without encoding, do any editing and then, just before burning a DVD, transfer to an MPEG format?

[boltoa]

"DV format" is AVI (on a PC at least). Pinnacle Studio will produce AVI files at about 12.5Gb/hr in full quality.

You don't say what software you are using for capture - it might help.

Andrew

[saggio]

Thanks Andrew,
after a few hours of fiddling, I have infact discovered that:
> MyDVD and Showbiz will not capture do AVI (only to MPEG)
> Ulead VideoStudio and MS MovieMaker will do. I have used MovieMaker in the end.
> I had to change the file formatting system of my HD from FAT32 to NTFS, so to be able to capture files larger than 4GB (one full 60min DV tape, once captured in AVI, gives a file of 13GB)

Giorgio