[Boostrail]

Hi as I posted a few weeks ago in another thread I was about to embark on transfer of a load of standard 8 family cine films dating from around 1956 to 1975. I learnt a lot in the process with focus issues, white balance, aperture management, etc.

However I have an issue which I cannot explain but I will start at the beginning.
One factor I found that applied to my DV camcorder is that there is no output via firewire in recording mode only playback mode. So I decided to record to DV tape but simultaneously capture via S-video and a Dazzle DVC 90 that I have used to transfer old SVHS-C tapes OK. For those that do not know this device it captures in full format and software encodes analogue to DV-AVI (13Gb/hr). I ended up with nearly 9 hours of capture and of course 9 DV tapes. This took at least twice this time to acquire due to cleaning film, threading, rewinding, repairing etc.

With the DazzleDVC90 which I have had for a couple of years you get a stripped down version of Pinnacle Studio however I have found this to be adequate and remarkably easier to use than at least the trial versions of other editors that have been mentioned on this forum. Frame precise edits, insertion of chapter marks, addition of background music etc are a doddle compared with others.

If I play the captured AVI's full screen they look fine. They also look excellent in the Pinnacle preview window. After editing and adding titles menus chapter poinfs etc I have ended up with projects that fit onto 7 DVD's at max quality. If I save the edited project as an AVI it looks fine on replay. However if I render and produce a DVD the result is very noticeably grainy ( a bit like a cross of digital artefacts and analog weak signal snow) It also seems to be aligned in fuzzy vertical noise lines

So I decided to try a couple of experiments. I captured the same section of cine from the DV tape via firewire and placed it alongside the same S-Video captured section on the Pinnacle time line. I then saved this project as .avi and could not perceive a difference. However burning this same project to DVD showed a great improvement between the firewire captured version to the S-video captured version with the latter again having this "noise" that appears to have a vertical structure.

I also tried a further experiment and acquired the same DV tape section both via firewire and S-Video direct to a DVD in my older DVD recoerder. This definitely gave the best results with nothing to chose between the input methods.

If anyone can throw any light on my experiences I would be very grateful.

As it would seem that I have possibly got to replay 9 hrs of tape to get the best quality would I be better recording all to DVD via my DVDR and using what I am told are around - a seamless mpeg editor?

[redsox_mark]

Hard to say why; but it does seem that for whatever reason the Dazzle device is producing DV which Pinnacle has trouble encoding to MPEG2 for DVD.

If the DVD recorder gives you the best results, yes use that. If your edits aren't too complex, Womble has a good lossless MPEG2 editor
http://www.womble.com/

[Boostrail]

Originally Posted by redsox_mark

Hard to say why; but it does seem that for whatever reason the Dazzle device is producing DV which Pinnacle has trouble encoding to MPEG2 for DVD.

Yes I agree. However afaik it is not the device that codes to DV but the software which is I assume part of the Pinnacle package as it is in that that I can chose to capture in mpeg or DV-AVI and set the conditions. For future reference and use I will do some experiments with the settings to see whether that makes any difference. It is almost as if the mpeg encoding is enhancing the inherent grain in the film. Why it doesn't have the same problem when encoding firewire capture I do not know.

Originally Posted by redsox_mark

If the DVD recorder gives you the best results, yes use that. If your edits aren't too complex, Womble has a good lossless MPEG2 editor
http://www.womble.com/

Yes Ill give this a go.