MINIDV to DVD

T

tte2004

New member
I was wondering if there was a way to go straight from MINIDV to DVD with a DSR-11 and a computer or stand alone DVD burner. Looking to dub about 50 MINIDV tapes to DVD. While keeping the original time code.

Any help is appreciated.

- tte2004
 
You can buy set top DVD recorders that have Firewire ports. Then it's just like dubbing tapes. You have no control over menu options, however, so if that's important to you it's something to consider.
 
tte - keep in mind that when you go from DV to DVD there is a significant loss of quality. The MPEG-2 compression which is applied to your DV is about 3:1, and it is definitely visible to the eye if you play the original DV versus the DVD into the same monitor. I started archiving DV on DVD using a high-end stand-alone DVD recorder with a firewire input, but quickly gave it up because of the lower quality picture. Hopefully when HD DVD or Blu-ray comes out we will be able to record nearly uncompressed DV with no quality loss.
 
DV is already compressed format about 5:1 and DVD's MPEG-2 makes this even worse, approx. 20:1 compared to uncompressed video.
If I remember correctly, you can't keep your timecode when recording to DVD because DVD (MPEG-2) doesn't have separate frames like DV format does.
Not sure however.
So...keep your cassettes and wait for Blu-ray or HD-DVD.
Remember, original DV footage takes 13GB (gigabytes) per hour, DVD can hold 3,7GB (you must compress hardly to fit even 1 hour!) , HD-DVD and Blu-ray 25...50GB.
 
You can go straight from MINIDV to DVD by using iDVD that comes with the iLife bundle on MAC's. There is an option on there that will allow you to do that.
 
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