quality of picture

Iv recently got into video editing and have a sony tvr140
i got a programme with it (pixela) which captures the footage
but the picture quality is poor
i have watched other home movies edited on the pc but they still have the same quality as it is on camera.
Please, how do i improve the pictue quality on the pc (xp)?????

 

Depends on the output & quality of encoding program.

I encode my DV footage with Canopus Procoder for MPEG to DVD. Obviously it's heavily compressed over the original but I still maintain you'd be hard pressed to notice any drop in quality over the original DV footage.

I use Sonic Foundry's Vegas for editing & their DV codec is very good.

 

I do not know the software supplied with your camcorder so am unable to advise you on the settings. It will almost certainly be a matter of changing these.
You say that you have Windows XP. This means that you have an editing programme that is supplied with XP called Movie Maker. Go to the MS web site and download MM2 (free and a big improvement over MM1). This is very easy to use and might give better results.

Mark.

 

Sam - are you capturing by USB? This may explain the poor quality. Do as Mark said and get MM2 and capture via Firewire. I have a Sony D8 cam and used PixelA via USB and the picture was awful. I then used Pinnacle Studio (similar to MM2) and downloaded via Firewire and the picture was the same as on the camera.

HTH