Please can someone advise.

I have a Sony miniDV Camcorder (a few years old) that I have been transferring to DVD via a DVD recorder - which has just died. I have tried connecting the Camcorder to my PC (also a few years old) via the supplied USB cable. However, this produces terrible picture quality.

Questions:
Do I need to fit a video capture card into my PC?
Do I need firewire?
Do I need special software?
With or without the above, can I get the same quality transfer using my PC, or should I just buy a new DVD recorder?

[StevieBuck]

As you will probably already know, capturing to a DVD recorder is fairly simple - just connect them up and hit record.

Using a PC is more time consuming, but will allow you do much more post-processing i.e from basic cutting of video to adding in transitions, video overlays etc. Anyway, USB is definitly not the way to go as you've found out - a Firewire connection is really needed to transfer the DV video to your PC without losing quality.

If you don't have a firewire connection on your PC, you can get a PCI Firewire card to slot into the back of your machine which are relatively cheap. You can use software like Nero to capture the video, but you can get free software (like WinDV) to transfer it over which is free and easy to use. Video capture cards or devices are another option as you say, but I've never used them - and don't think they give the same quality as transferiing the DV video over by firewire.

After you have the DV video on your PC you need to then use video editing software to edit it and convert to a DVD MPEG-2 file. If you encode the video properly I think the quality would be better over PC than the standalone recorder - as you have more control over the encoding process/settings this way. The DVD recorder works essentially by doing an on-the-fly encode to convert the video as it's played to DVD compliant MPEG-2 at a fixed bitrate.

If you want to spend the extra time doing going though this, I could explain further about the software you can use to convert the video. If you're happy enough with the set-up you had before, just og buy another recorder.

OK, cheers for the excellent reply. I was happy with the quality I was getting from my DVD recorder and not fussed about editing, so think I'll just buy a new DVD recorder. the Sony RDRGX350B seems to get some good reviews on various websites and is currently only £80 at Amazon and play.com so I think I'll go for that.

Once thing that slightly concerns me though - I've read some people have had problems trying to copy DVDs recorded on Sony DVDRs using their PC?

[StevieBuck]

I'm not sure about that to be honest. If you look or post over in the DVD recorder session, someone there would be more likely to help you out.

[jaymac]

[

Once thing that slightly concerns me though - I've read some people have had problems trying to copy DVDs recorded on Sony DVDRs using their PC?[/QUOTE]


Providing the dvd is finalized there should be no problem just cos it is Sony .DVD probs are usually trying toplay on a player after recording on a pc and even these are usually easy to overcome
IF in doubt geta Panasonic