Hi

I am new to all this, so please forgive any stupid questions.

I have a Canon MV600i and am using Ulead's Video Studeo 7 and firewire to transfer video to my PC (and then to DVD). I have an Athlon 64 3500+ system with 2 gig RAM, SATA, XP Pro SP1.

I am finding that the quality of the mpegs I get on the PC is poor and then poorer still once burned to DVD. There is a fair amount of pixelation and it looks (to me) as if I were filming through a "frosted glass" filter (of course, I am not). I have seen a friends efforts using an analogue camera and Premiere Pro 1.5 (I think) and the quality is significantly better than my efforts, so I am sure I am doing things wrong.

The settings I use are more or less the defaults in VS7, except that I try to use DVD rather than SVCD, etc, where possible.

Here are some file properties from one of my efforts:
PAL (25 fps)
MPEG files
24 Bits, 720 x 576, 25 fps
Field Order A
(DVD-PAL), 4:3
Video data rate: Variable (Max. 8000 kbps)
LPCM Audio, 48 KHz, Stereo

I find that the quality seems poor on the PC, worse still on DVD. I have footage outdoors and indoors, the former being better than the latter (presumably due to better light) but still not "great".

In case it helps, I have included a frame grab of the sort of output I am currently able to achieve.

Thanks in advance for any help anyone may be able to offer

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I see what you mean. I use an MV600, and although the quality is obviously not perfect, it's generally better than that. Not being familiar with that package, is there an option to save as a different format before converting to MPEG?

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Hi mikefishcake - thank you for the reply. There are options for different formats to save the captured file as - I have been using the "DVD" option (this seems to save as MPEG, but there is an "MPEG" option also); I assume this is the best one to use :-S

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There are 10 types of people, those who understand binary and those who don\'t.

Your output settings are correct.

What are your capture settings? Does the captured footage look poor when viewed through Windows Media Player? Have you de-fragged your hard disk?

Thanks

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What were the lighting conditions like when you shot the footage? Did you have any kind of low light filter on?

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