[Chris Mahaffey]

I have a dvx100b and PD-170 (and ironically just sold a vx2100). I find that the PD-170 is better in lowlight than the dvx100b. The dvx100 is not horrible in lowlight though and it really depends on what other features you need from your camera. The dvx100 has a lot of features that the Sony does not.

Short answer: If you are ONLY concerned with lowlight then go with the PD-170. If not, it will depend on your overall needs.

[Chris Mahaffey]

I thought that MainConcept WAS the encoder packaged with PP2, if not then I’m using the encoder packaged with PP2.

I don’t want to take the file directly into encore because that may not ultimately be the authoring package I use. I felt like encoding out of PP2 would give me the flexibility to use whatever tool I want. I’m not losing anything by doing this, correct? Encore is not transcoding anything when I build the DVD so I would assume that my files where already compliant. Also, wouldn’t I be encoding twice to get from from PP2 to encore? I could lose some quality and would prefer to skip that intermediate step.

Finally, isn’t PCM the highest quaility I can get for audio? If not, what would be? Isn’t AC3 Dolby Digital? I’m not familiar with that compression, what would be the best settings to use?

Thanks,

Chris