Picture Quality After Sony Handycam Download to Computer
I have just transfered my first movie from my
camera to my computer then burned to DVD. The picture quality is awful!
The camera I have is a sony handycam and I have a dell 8600 that I am using to capture. I also just bought a sony DVD burner that came with NERO and IN-CD. But had much better luck with WMM for capturing. I really could not get NERO to do much of anything. Is there a good software I could get?
I am a little confused as to what my IEEE 1394 actually is and does?
My camera has a cable that connects to the camera and then to my usb port.
I have the IEEE 1394 card, should I get the right cable to connect to that?
The video I shot looks great on the camera, it looks great when I play it back onto my 36" TV from the camera. But when I download to the computer and it compresses to avi or mpeg it does not play back well on larger screens and the dvd I burned looks horrible! Please help with any suggestions.
camera to my computer then burned to DVD. The picture quality is awful!
The camera I have is a sony handycam and I have a dell 8600 that I am using to capture. I also just bought a sony DVD burner that came with NERO and IN-CD. But had much better luck with WMM for capturing. I really could not get NERO to do much of anything. Is there a good software I could get?
I am a little confused as to what my IEEE 1394 actually is and does?
My camera has a cable that connects to the camera and then to my usb port.
I have the IEEE 1394 card, should I get the right cable to connect to that?
The video I shot looks great on the camera, it looks great when I play it back onto my 36" TV from the camera. But when I download to the computer and it compresses to avi or mpeg it does not play back well on larger screens and the dvd I burned looks horrible! Please help with any suggestions.
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Comments
I have the Sony HD handycam and found that I had/have the same issues.
Since getting it I have learned a lot.
The EEE 1394 or Firewire (Sony I-Link) is a way of transfering data/video to your computer. I find that it is simular to a scusi system in that you can actually attach many data devices to one Firewire (EEE 1394) channel like sccusi drives.
Since you posted that your camcorder has EEE 1394 (firewire) that is going to be the best way to send your video (capture) to your computer.
As I have read and best understand the handycam records video in a Sony propriatary raw cdec that is I think MPEG 2 but because it is in the RAW format any decient DVD burning software can capture the raw format in AVI or mepg 2.
By using the firewire to capture from you will get the raw format from the camcorder which will allow you the ability to render the final copy to your format of choice with the max detail and quality.
The other thing that I have figured out that is important, is the settings you choose to render the final video to DVD in. In buying the HD version I have complicated my final choices even further.
I have not tried capturing and burning right to DVD from NERO. When I bought my Sony Handycam it came with a software video editing package called Vagas Movie Studio Platnium and a sound program and a DVD making program. I also bought an external Sony dual layer burner that came with NERO and a copy of Pinicale Studio (might have came with my firewire card too, can't remember exactly but it came with one of the 2) anyhoo...
I am trying to figure out which program works the best still.
I read that if you want to make a DVD of the video you shoot from your handycam if you have a setting on the camera to "down convert" when you are capturing from the Sony I-link (EEE 1394, Firewire) don't use it. It is there for a reason but I can't remember why, however, not for using with the I-Link/firewire.
Also there was a tutorial that came with the Vagas Movie Studio progy that talked about knowing the type of screen/TV you are going to play the DVD on.
You have to render your video into the format and quality level that you intend to play it back on.
If you are recording in 4:3 format and are going to send it through a modern DVD player to a normal TV then you will want to render it as NTSC non wide screen at the 720X460 24fps to 29.9fps. I think that I have figured out that the fps rate is key to how it will look when rendering is complete. if you choose 24 to 25fps you will get a movie or film look. if you render at the 29.9fps you should get the video look.
I also found setting up your computer is also key.
I found that I didn't get dropped frames during capture when I set up my computer to have nothing running in the background other than the OS.
I set up a seperate XP account that is set up so when I log in to it nothing starts up including virus scanning, but I also set it up so that it disabled the internet connection while I am in my video account so I don't need the virus scanner running.
Also, I set up the capture and rendering settings so that it sends all of the video and capture stuff to a seperate disk drive than my drive with my OS on it. Doing that speeds things up. You may not have 2 hard drives to set that up but you can still be sucessfull, it will just take longer.
I found that setting up the capture program to not show the video during the capture process or the render process also stopped dropped frames and gave me better quality DVDs.
"g"
Thanks for the tips. I will let you know how it goes!