Capturing Video to a DVD Recorder - is quality ok ?

[tjodork]

Hi.
I'm looking at paying someone to recover some messed up tapes.
The hard job is misaligning a 20 year old camcorder to read the tapes...
He basically takes the output from the camcorder and feeds it into a DVD Recorder
(I think like the units that have a VHS tape player and a DVD recorder combined)
While the output will be playable in a DVD player I'm sure....what kind of quality will it
be for editting ?
For the tapes that I've been able to read I've been creating AVI files and splitting into smaller
sections based on events and then storing on multiple DVD's.
It typically takes 7 DVD's per tape by the time I'm done ...so thus I'm worried about the
DVD disk from the recorder.
Any thoughts ?

Thanks
Tim

[Steve Grisetti]

Assuming he's using decent equipment to do the capture, the quality should be good, standard def quality.

You'll likely need to render your timeline a lot as you work -- but you should be able to use it in a properly set up editing project also.

[momoffduty]

The tapes to DVD will be compressed. I have a combo unit and if he can feed video to it then maybe he can use the unit as a pass thru?

[tjodork]

so i thought i would try a little experiment... i had just created a slideshow for a graduation and so I imported the VOB file into PRE10 to check the qualify
what I saw was that it was not very clear compared to the original (see both pictures)....so I figured ...this is NOT good....and I wouldn't want captured video direct to a recorded DVD....

then...I used Share, Burn to DVD (to file)(SD project), created the file and then used Nero to burn the disk....when I viewed the disk on the TV ..it looked fine... its possible is was slightly worse but not significant... It seems like the fact that it looks much worse in the PRE10 that the output would be worse... why not ?

[momoffduty]

That is interesting on the quality diff. Seems to me that a disc is compressed so there are are less full info frames. I vs B & P frames. When the copy was burned and compressed again there would be even less because now you have a copy of a copy. Maybe viewing on the TV vs a computer screen makes a diff?

What I don't understand is what is he doing that is special to align the tapes in the cam to the combo unit?

Can he transfer the video tapes to the combo unit and from the unit to a Pyro, for example, to his computer and save on an external for you to edit AVI files?

[Chuck Engels]

I think the only difference is between your television and the computer monitor, much different resolution.
Stuff that looks terrible on your computer can still look pretty good on a TV

[Bob]

I would not consider the difference between the vob project and the original project that you show in your screen captures insignificant. The text is definitely softer in the vob version and there is a lot of detail lost in the image of the young lady. That you are not seeing that difference on your tv could be a number of things.

First, are you comparing apples to oranges. It would be more meaningful if you imported the vob from the second one you burned and compared that to the vob from the first project.

TV resolution does make a difference. Is your TV an analog set or a digital set? HD or SD?