Anything better than MPEG 2 for DVD?
 

Sorry If I'm boring you but I'm really trying to get the best I can out of my little camera & pc..

Anyway my question is......

At Present I'm converting all my film from my camera to MPEG 2 in order to put it on DVD, How ever is their anything better than MPEG 2 that I should be converting it to???

Thanks

Gary

Mpeg2 is going to be the codec for DVD authoring. You should probably convert everything to an intermediate format, such as Cineform or a much less compressed format for archiving. We use AVI. When you're ready to output your DVD's, then you can convert that to Mpeg2. Mpeg2 is pretty compressed, and most people probably would not recommend archiving it that way, just in case you want to re-use the footage.

Your most economical best storage for your raw footage is your orginal tape. It is unaltered. If you capture to your computer for editing, you should not capture in mpeg. While it can be edited, it is better to edit in the DV .avi capture format. I am assuming you are using PC, so something as simple as Pinnacle Studio, Vegas Movie Studio or AVID Free can be used to capture and edit. Your raw footage could be stored as a data file on DVD, but not for playback. If you are looking to play captured footage by DVD, then you would have to do a render to DVD and burn.

Pinnacle Studio 10 plus includes a direct to DVD capture utility that actually works pretty slick. It writes directly to DVD as capture is ongoing.

The raw (unaltered) DV files, captured from a 60 minute tape, can fit on approximately 3 single layer DVDs.