I have a Sony DCR-HC32 mini DV camcorder, a P4 2.8GHz 704 MB RAM Compaq laptop, Windows XP Home, Belkin firewire cable, and 1GB SanDisk memory stick duo. I have a new baby so I have lots of videos of her. I tried to copy my videos from mini DV tapes to my PC using the firewire cable and Windows Movie Maker. Based on my own research in the internet, I have to use the firewire cable, instead of USB, to retain the original quality of the video. Using the USB, I get poor quality videos to my PC. Using the firewire, I get some improvements but still not of the same quality as the original when I compare hooking the camcorder directly to the TV. Why can't I retain the original quality videos when moving them to my PC? I tried to use the memory stick to record videos, but I don't get very good quality videos compared to mini DV tapes. My Canon PowerShot A540 shoots better videos on SD card! Many thanks for the help.
If you use Moviemaker and follow these directions http://www.digitalvideoclub.com/tutorials/moviemakermistakes.php about capturing in DV-AVI your files will contain the video and sound in original quality. Don't be fooled by the way it looks on your PC monitor, because it may look much worse than it actually is. You can test it by capturing it to PC and record the captured file back to tape. Connect the cam to your TV and compare the original material with the footage taht you transferred to and fro. The difference in quality should be zero.
I tried to do your suggestions. I know what my problem is, everytime I make Video CD's with Nero OEM 6 it reduces the resolution to 320 x 240. Then when I play it in my dvd player the quality of the videos is not as good as the original on TV. Are there any vcd-making softwares that can make high resolution videos? Or 320 x 240 is the standard for vcd's. I don't have a dvd burner in my laptop, now I'm thinking of getting an external dvd burner.
I don't think you end up with 320x240, but 352x240. This is the standard framesize for VCD in NTSC. There is no way around it. You will certainly not retain the original quality if you go from tape to VCD, although you can achieve better quality if you use a better encoder. A stand alone one like TMPGEnc is certainly better than the one that is built in in Nero. I certainly would xonsider to buy a DVD burner. They are not that expensive anymore and you end up with much better quality than VCD. But be aware: even when going from tape to DVD you will loose quality, although if you do it right you will hardly notice that.
