lol! I agree, Mission Impossible 3 definatly shouldn't be a definative reference! It was however the first 'Hollywood blockbuster' movie that came to mind when writing the string (which is worrying!)

Ok, I'm going to adapt my question a bit because I'd still love to know if anyone has an answer for it:

Notwithstanding that my little MiniDV camcorder is what it is, the image recorded and captured into Adobe Premiere Pro is of an excellent quality (yes yes its not a professional 3ccd etc camcorder). However, when I push all of the quality and kb/s or mb/s rates bars to the max in the 'export to DVD' function of Adobe Premiere Pro, my PC comes back after a little bit of processing with an error message about rates being too high or maybe system resources not being sufficient etc etc.

Ok, I understand that I'm not giving anyone here any specific information and appreciate that until you have some, there's little that you can offer in help terms, but has anyone else out there managed to get a post transcoded DVD that is almost identical to the 'captured' avi quality?

If so, i'd be interested in hearing what setting you use for your setup of PC - hmmm and your PC Spec too.

What I'm getting at is the question of - what do I need (hardware/software settings) to go from my MiniDV camcorder, to DVD with no or little identifyable loss in quality/sharpness etc? - they do it for hollywood movies, so what do they use and what is available for me to use if their kit is £50k SGi stuff...?

For information, I have nothing remotely special as a PC:

CPU: AMD XP 2800+
Memory: 1.5GB Crucial 400Mhz bus (i think its MHz?)
Video: Ati X700 128MB AGP
HDDs:
40GB PATA 7200rpm as OS/Apps HDD
2 x 300GB Seagate SATA (used for storing editing files etc)
1 x 250GB Music/Photos drive

I think thats all of significance. I'm sure you'll let me know if i've missed anything vital!


Thanks in advance!

PS I capture the video from my MiniDV camcorder onto Adobe, then edit it (cut it up, delete out all of the drivel, speed bits up, slow others down, add a few music backing tracks) in the same adobe premiere pro project, pulling in digital camera pictures and adding text, render it and then export it to DVD. All within Adobe Premiere Pro.