I plan to get a DVD Writer in the future and thought I'd ask a bunch of questions now.

1) Say you have a finished project all shot in DV quality. how easy/hard is the conversion process to DVD?

2) I'm assumming DV quality and DVD is basically the same, so you don't lose resolution when you convert from DV onto DVD?

Now a side question:

this brings up another question ive been wondering. Say you capture analog video (like vhs) directly onto a miniDV Camcorder. So you are converting analog to digital. What's the process there? When you compare the original VHS quality to what you transfered on digital...what's the difference?

actually i just answered one of my questions. Was reading some DVD faqs and realized that DVD is in fact in 720x480 pixel resolution as well.

Okay so now I'm reading that the only sources for making DVD are D1, Digital BetaCam, and D2.

D1 is the same as DV, correct?

The transcoding can be either simple or easy, depending on which software you use on your machine. I've had excellent success with TMPGEnc and NERO. I create my DV with my NLE and output to AVI format. Then I use TMPGEnc to convert the AVI file to MPEG2 DVD format. TMPGEnc has all the necessary templates to do the conversion painlessly. The hardest part of this step is deciding how much compression to use so that your entire project fits on one or two DVD-R's. There are software calculators available to do this calculation. You want to use all the available DVD-R surface because it will maximize the quality of the video by using the highest bitrate available to fill the whole disk. As a final step, I use NERO to burn the properly converted DVD (MPEG2) files onto the DVD-R. I also use ULEAD's Movie Factory to automate the playback process on the DVD and to provide a GUI for the user to select which clip he wants to view.

There are NLE's on the market that will allow direct burning onto DVD from the NLE. I'm currently experimenting with Vegas Video 3 which uses a MainConcept codec to create the MPEG2 output file. So far, the quality looks comparable to TMPGEnc., and being able to burn to disk from the NLE looks like a great time saver, altho' a little risky from a preview standpoint. I like to be able to test drive each intermediate stage before burning.

All in all, a lot of fun.

Thanks for the feedback bill.

I did come across www.vcdhelp.com and it looks like they have detailed information on 'stuff'. Looks like TMPGEnc is freeware so that looks like the way to go for the conversion.

Can't wait to try it out. Need to find a decent DVD Recorder now. I'll probably wait a couple of months.