transfer minidv to hard drive - quality and size issues

[iprolonged]

Hi all,

I have some video on MiniDV (shot with a Sony DCR-PC110E), and I'm using Nero 8 (Nero Vision 5) to pull the video across to my laptop via FireWire. Nero Vision automatically converts the video to DV-AVI: so far so good.

A 60min MiniDV is converting to about a 15Gb .avi file, which I then edit/trim again using Nero Vision. My problem is the exporting process. I've tried a few combinations, and haven't got great results from - encoding as AVI gives reasonable quality (using either the 'No Compression' or divx compression options) but results in HUGE files (sometimes bigger than the original? huh!). Encoding as MPEG-2 (DVD-Video compatible) gives horribly blocky, pixellated footage that is almost unwatchable, and compresses to around 4Gb.

I want to pull the footage off the tapes, and store it on a hard disk (I'll watch it via a media box), so want to encode it at a reasonably small size at a quality level I can watch without wincing. Any suggestions? Do I need to change to different AV software suite, or possibly look at breaking the footage up into small clips?

Appreciate any help,

Dave

[MarkE19]

DV .AVI is compressed at 5:1 in the camcorder before being written to tape. So when you capture as DV .AVI you should be getting an exact copy of what is on the tape, and around 13Gb per hour is about right.
If you export the edited file to uncompressed AVI then it will end up approx 5x the size of the origional file. Divx should be a fair bit smaller than the origional but there are many settings for compression/quality and as I don't use Nero for file conversion I can't tell you what you need to do to get the size down. MPEG-2 at a reasonable compression of about 4Gb per hour should look about as good as the origional.
I suggest you post the compression settings and we can advise what to change.
Nero should be capable of good results, so I would think it is down to the setup of the software or the laptop itself. How much space is there on the HDD? What are the specs of the laptop? An external HDD may help is the drive is fairly full or it is a bit old and slow.

Mark.

[senu]

Originally Posted by iprolonged

Hi all,

I have some video on MiniDV (shot with a Sony DCR-PC110E), and I'm using Nero 8 (Nero Vision 5) to pull the video across to my laptop via FireWire. Nero Vision automatically converts the video to DV-AVI: so far so good

.
Actually the footage is on the tape as DV AVI

A 60min MiniDV is converting to about a 15Gb .avi file, which I then edit/trim again using Nero Vision. My problem is the exporting process.
I've tried a few combinations, and haven't got great results from - encoding as AVI gives reasonable quality (using either the 'No Compression' or divx compression options) but results in HUGE files (sometimes bigger than the original? huh!). Encoding as MPEG-2 (DVD-Video compatible) gives horribly blocky, pixellated footage that is almost unwatchable, and compresses to around 4Gb.

I want to pull the footage off the tapes, and store it on a hard disk (I'll watch it via a media box), so want to encode it at a reasonably small size at a quality level I can watch without wincing. Any suggestions? Do I need to change to different AV software suite, or possibly look at breaking the footage up into small clips?

The DVD footage on commercial DVDs is mpeg2 and at best quality 4Gb of that is one hrs worth
Encoding from DV AVI to mpeg2 at great quality is somewhat dependent on the quality of the encoder
Assuming the original footage is sterling, it also depends on encoding bitrate and no of passes
Thw encoding bitrate is a range ( from 2-9mbs ) Lower encoding results in poorer quality smaller files and the converse is true. however bitrates above 8 do not guarantee better quality and may be difficult for some DVD players to decode
Associated with bitrates is the use of variable bit rate or fixed bitrates and no of passes. : 2 passes take more time but may result in smoother video

In short : poor mpeg2 may be as a result of settings used in encoding or quality of encoder ( or both)
My experience with nero vision has been fine but I haven used it extensively as I have other software
Ensure that the mpeg2 is DVD quality as mpeg2 can be of any pixel dimension and encoding depending on its proposed use

Uncompressed AVIs are impractical as they are too large and may not be of proportionate better quality than well encoded mpeg2
For pure PC viewing wmv or divx are also good
PS: Im at work and interupted this to attend to other matters: if there is a repetition of the above it is unintended as we were probably posting simultaneously

[iprolonged]

Thanks for the replies.

The laptop is a Dell Latitude D630, 30Gb HD free, 2Gb RAM, and a Core Duo chip @ 2.2 GHz - less than 6 months old, so it should be OK. Nero does display a message about "hardware acceleration" being deactivated, and that it may prevent some capture devices from working, but my capture is fine. I think.

I'm going to try encoding as MPEG-2 again, using the following settings - hopefully it might look a bit better.

http://img116.imageshack.us/img116/4907/mpegsettingslp8.th.png

Thanks again for your replies.

Dave

[senu]

Good luck .Im not so sure about Progressive but what would be a good idea is to do short segments for experimentation and comparison

[iprolonged]

Originally Posted by senu

Good luck .Im not so sure about Progressive but what would be a good idea is to do short segments for experimentation and comparison

Quick update - seem to have gotten improvements when I select the 2-Pass encoding with MPEG. Really appreciate all the help everyone.

Dave

[MarkE19]

With only 30Gb of free space on the HDD you may find capture of ~15Gb to be a bit problematic. As the HDD fills up it slows down as it needs to work harder to find space on the drive. Files also become more fragmented and probelms such as dropped frames start to become more common.
With the above in mind I would suggest that you clear down some more HDD space if at all possible and defragment the HDD before starting any capture & editing. If possible it will be well worth getting an external HDD to give more space for capture & editing. Or as senu suggested, try capturing smaller files to see if that helps.

Mark.