Capturing for DVD - avi or mpeg2?

[Kov-Ice]

I've been using avi files all along with Pinnacle Studio. If the project is going only to DVD, would it make more sense to capture in mpeg format, as the file sizes seem to be smaller?

[RJ]

No it would not make more sense to capture directly to MPEG-2 format.
Capturing in AVI or MPEG. . it depends on how much work you want to invest and how much quality you expect.

Quality-wise, nothing beats captuing to AVI and then use a good MPEG encoder to encode to MPEG-2.
Of course the AVI will be very big, and the MPEG encoding will take quite a while (though with today's fast PCs it can be quite fast, too), but you get the best quality. Also if you want to edit the video stream. .like adding transitions and stuff, it's better to have an AVI. MPEG is more a distribution format rather than an edit format. You can edit an MPEG-2 stream as well, but the quality will suffer.

Now by capturing directly to MPEG-2 you don't get the big AVI first. But because the encoder has to encode in real time, the quality will be lower. . although I have to admit there are hardware MPEG-2 encoders that produce a very good quality, too.

RJ

[Kov-Ice]

So I'm good with what I've been doing then. I will capture AVI, do some editing and transitions in small chunks of video, save as AVI, and then put the smaller AVI files together to transition them into the final project and author the menus.

I thought I had heard or read that AVI was better to work with, but I wondered why Studio had an option to capture in MPEG. In browsing through the manual, it said something like 'if outputting to DVD or VCD, MPEG might be the better choice." I guess that's if you're taking the exact capture and outputting to disc without any editing.

[RJ]

Yeah, it's fine the way you do.. . just the small chunks of video .. I don't really understand why you're doing that as it involves the step of putting the AVIs together. If you don't split the AVI you don't need to put the pieces together.

Studio has the option to capture in MPEG because other people have different views. Some people might not want to capture a huge avi and then encode it afterwards. The quality isn't bad, and it might be sufficient for them.
I mean, it's just an option. To each his own and I like it that everyone can choose what he likes. That way a quality-freak like me is not forced to capture in MPEG-2 (even if I don't want to edit it) or someone who is not so quality demanding and wants it fast can use MPEG-2 realtime encoding. I think that is why the manual says "might be" instead of "is".

RJ

[easg]

I am agreed, it is better to capture video in avi format and then do the encode to mpg, I use TMPGEnc for this porpuse.

[Kov-Ice]

Originally Posted by RJ I don't really understand why you're doing that as it involves the step of putting the AVIs together. If you don't split the AVI you don't need to put the pieces together.RJ

That's my work-around for the poor excuse of a video editing program (Pinnacle Studio 8) I purchased without doing my research. If the work files get too big, or if I have too many titles, transitions, or effects, it becomes very moody. It's just the safest way I've found to accomplish what I need.