3 replies to this topic

[The Jeep]

Hi - I have Sonic MyDVD Ver 4.5 (OK, it's not the latest) and I've been using the 'Create DVD Project' to take WMP files from TV recordings and burn them to disk for later viewing.

The process does work, albeit slowly, but there is a marked drop in video quality on the final DVD compared to the WMP version. Is this inevitable? I was hoping for better results!

Perhaps someone knows of some tweaks that will improve things? My expectation was that, as everything is in the digital domain, there shouldn't be a great loss in picture quality (some, yes, but not much).

Thanks.

[Beerman]

The Jeep, on Jan 18 2007, 09:20 AM, said:

Hi - I have Sonic MyDVD Ver 4.5 (OK, it's not the latest) and I've been using the 'Create DVD Project' to take WMP files from TV recordings and burn them to disk for later viewing.

The process does work, albeit slowly, but there is a marked drop in video quality on the final DVD compared to the WMP version. Is this inevitable? I was hoping for better results!

Perhaps someone knows of some tweaks that will improve things? My expectation was that, as everything is in the digital domain, there shouldn't be a great loss in picture quality (some, yes, but not much).

Thanks.

It's a problem of compression.  If you take a compressed file and it is umcompressed to a dvd compliant file, you are likely to loose quality.  Can you start with a better tv capture as in an mpeg or DV AVI?  Exactly what are the files you are starting with.....bitrate setting info would help.

[The Jeep]

Beerman, on Jan 18 2007, 07:57 AM, said:

It's a problem of compression.  If you take a compressed file and it is umcompressed to a dvd compliant file, you are likely to loose quality.  Can you start with a better tv capture as in an mpeg or DV AVI?  Exactly what are the files you are starting with.....bitrate setting info would help.

Thanks Beerman. I have two options when capturing TV on my WinTV card, MPEG1 VCD and MPEG1 2MBit.
I am currently using the former, but will try the latter as it may be better (I guess I'll do a test recording with each and see which generates the bigger file). No indication of bitrate.

[The Jeep]

Update...the 2MBit setting does produce a larger file (8/5 of the size). There is an option to increase the video output size in the AVI recording menu, but that doesn't make any difference to the MPEGs that I record (I don't know how to switch to recording AVI files, or if that's beneficial).

In the menu for AVI recording/set capture file, there is an option to select a compression type. There are quite a few to choose from, but I'm a bit confused as I seem only to record MPEG1 files, which have fewer options (only the above two, VCD or 2MBit).

Hope this isn't too rambling and vahue!

The Jeep, on Jan 20 2007, 03:29 AM, said:

Hope this isn't too rambling and vahue!

That's vague....