Tape to DVD to Computer

[Alexander Kallas]

[Matt Gerard] “Take your awesome Monet painting, start it on fire, attempt to put out with a rake. Then drive over it a couple times. That is what dumping video to DVD does to the quality of the original. If the original is bad, it makes it logarithmically worse. If its awesome looking footage, it makes it worse. Using DVD’s for a source is the last resort.”

Whoa, too harsh, so you think Hollywood DVDs are the “last resort”?
Actually there are some brilliant m2v encoders out there, eg ever tried CinemaCraft plug-in for Compressor? You just have to learn to use them to the max.

Cheers
Alexander

[Zeke Meginsky]

Okay. So I have the tapes, so capturing the original footage would obviously be better than taking DV-50 from the DVDs.

Now I have an interesting question. While I noticed that many of the clips have a drop in quality, there were a few clips that we took from tapes. I just don’t know which ones. Is there any way for us to figure this out by looking at the file size? Is captured footage going to consume much more space than footage taken from a DVD using MPEG Streamclip?

[Chris Tompkins]

View all clips in the browser. You’ll see the “Reel” names…

Chris Tompkins
Video Atlanta LLC

[Zeke Meginsky]

Oh, you’re right. Good call, thanks..

[Zeke Meginsky]

One last question, I promise.

Is there any way he could have went straight from DV to DVD without a loss in quality? The man told my professor that the loss in quality was very small and not noticable.

Could the problem be mostly because that it’s a copy of a copy: DV to DVD, and then me extracting it from the DVD, which is another small loss in quality, and selecting ‘deinterlace video’ which someone on this forum told me is wrong and yet another loss in quality? Is it because it was from a DVD in the first place?

[Chris Tompkins]

No, of course not. DVD is highly compressed. NO way around it. There is quality loss.

UNLESS, they burned you a DATA disc and put the mov files on there for transporting to another machine.

But an actually DVD, like they recorded straight to a DVD recorder. Not advised unless there is NO editing.

If the DV and the DVD were interlaced, you are ripping it to DV, then you want it to be interlaced.

Chris Tompkins
Video Atlanta LLC

[Matt Gerard]

[Alexander Kallas] “Whoa, too harsh, so you think Hollywood DVDs are the “last resort”? “

Well, I never use Hollywood DVD’s as sources, so I haven’t really given it any thought:)

But, no I agree that there is some awesome MPEG encoders out there, but most are outside the price range for most of us.

And in “last resort” was meant as it is a delivery format, the last in line, final resting place of the video. Not a source format. It would be the last option that i would ask for if someone was supplying assets for a project. I would rather wait and get tapes, or files or something not as compressed. But, I think that is universal.

Maybe my analogy was a bit harsh, partly humerous, partly trying to convey the importance of editors to stand up a little bit and insist on high quality sources. If someone says they will send me a DVD to edit, I immediately as them if the source tapes or files are available.

My .02.

Cheers!

Matt

Its more fun to ride a slow motorcycle fast than a fast motorcycle slow…