Video Quality isnt good !!?

Question

I download videos from my camcorder ( Sony dctrv 270 e ) to my pc through pcmcip card , and the vids are stored as .wma files .

When i put them on CD's the playback quality on dvd player isnt very good , actually the quality is much better when i put them on video tape !

How can i create dvd quality videos , do i need a program for that ? or do the vids need to be stored under other extension, or do they have to be converted .

I use windows movie maker to capture from video cam .

Have dvd burner on pc , have real player, jet audio , and sony picture package .

I hope someone can help me .

Thx in advance

Answer 1

Irridflare has clearly explained what might have gone wrong during tape transfer to PC and during burning to disk.

From his technical explanation, we could learn & deduce:

- that digital-8 video quality is almost similar if not equal to that of miniDV (considered one of the best),

- transfer (or capture) of digital video stream from tape requires a firewire connection to maintain original quality. (You mentioned pcmcia card - possibly a laptop firewire card?)

- if resources are available, try to do post production on the best quality video formats (DV-avi for this project) which normally would use up huge disk space.

- although not meant for intermediate or prof. editors, wmmaker can still do a decent capture and is capable of DV-AVI format. AVI was designed by Microsoft, who also designed wmmaker.

Answer 2

There's nothing wrong with your camcorder - the video quality of Digital 8 is almost identical to that of MiniDV.

There's nothing wrong with your capture software - you're just copying a string of 0s and 1s.

I don't know what you mean by PCMIP in this context.  Given that you're writing to tape, are you using firewire?

Your poor video quality is coming from capturing the video in a lossy format and then converting it to a different lossy format to record on CD.  You need to start by capturing the video as DV-AVI using fire wire (if you're not using that already) - if your PC hasn't already got one you'll need to install a firewire card. They're cheap, easy to install and readily available. You'll also need a firewire cable.  You can then edit the video with Windows Movie Maker, save it as DV-AVI (it's under Save on My Computer, Best quality show more choices, Other settings) and then write it to DVD using DVD Flick.  

Doing it this way you'll keep the quality as high as possible for as long as possible.

Answer 3

Hey,

  Part of your problem is the camera itself -- it's not a very good one.  Digital8 is a mediocre format at best; I'd recommend scrapping that and picking up a better camera (MiniDV -- do NOT ever get a cam that records to miniDVDs) for just a few hundred dollars.

  

  HOWEVER, in the meantime:

1.  .wma is a lossy compression; it's bad for storage, bad for playback, bad for everything except youtube.  You want to capture your video in uncompressed .avi format.  Windows Movie Maker can do this, but it may require some configuring at your end.  

2.  You're connecting the cam via pcmcip card?  Last I knew a pcmcip was a wireless networking card; I don't know how you're pulling that one off.  What you want to do is connect via i.Link (also know more commonly as Firewire or IEEE1394).  You'll need a firewire card installed on your computer, but your Digital8 camera has the port on it so that's good.  Plug in the cable and off you go...

3.  I recommend picking up some better capturing software -- Movie Maker is rubbish.  There are some good freebies out there (I like Sony Vegas 4.0), so go get yourself one of those.

  These steps will help your video quality... just be sure you have enough physical storage on your computer to pull this off (you'll want at LEAST 40gb to do any reasonable amount of video editing)

Answer 4

Pevious poster made some good comments. What you can try to do is increase the quality of the wmv file when it captures the video. It's possible that the default settings are low and degrades the original video. It's also possible that the degradation occurs when you're actually burning them to cd or dvd. First of all, a CD WILL NOT have enough room to store quality video. If that's what you're using, that's you're problem. A DVD will have enough storage for about 1 hour of high quality video, use that instead. Alternatively, you can go out and buy a newer camcorder, they're extremely affordable. You can spend $150 and get better results than a Hi8 camera.