Hi all,
I have just started putting my camcorder footage on dvd-r and i have a few questions.

I am using mini dv camcorder via firewire, capturing as avi, using TMPGEN to convert to mpeg 2 and then using ulead dvd movie to burn to dvd.

What sort of quality should i expect?? I thought i should get the same quality as the mini dv footage, but i am getting blocky effects like a vcd (not as bad as vcd)

Am I doing something wrong, or am i expecting too much??

Cheers

Have you downloaded the latest version, presets are there for DVD, select the option for 1hr max 2hr anything longer and quality will suffer, and are you judging the results on your computer of TV, if you are playing back on computer make sure its through a DVD player.

Peter.

When you ask about the latest version, I pressume you mean TMPGEN, if so, then i do have the latest version and i am using the presets for dvd. I am watching the playback on my setop dvd player into my TV.

I have not noticed and settings concerning length, but i will now look.

Cheers

Skip all the steps and save yourself some time by recording directly from DV to MPEG2 (e.g. skip the .avi step).

Unless of course your software does not give you this option......

If you are going for quality realtime MPEG2 encoding will not even
come near the quality of multipass non-realtime encoding.
TMPGEnc should give you very good results if you take the time
to learn the program. Good luck.

My friend had the same problem and the only thing he could do was to turn in deinterlacing. Loses some resolution but the overall quality was better. There must be a better way though.

De-interlacing should not result in quality loss, if you are using
good de-interlace routines. I shoot in frame mode (progressive)
and just encode that to mpeg2. When I'm getting a DVD burner
it is ready to go straight to DVD-R.

Here's a fantastic deinterlacing plug in:
http://revisionfx.com/rsfk.htm

- don