capturing from DV direct in mpeg2

I have DV sony camera that is over firmware connected to PC, mosty i use Vegas for capturing whole tapes at DV format and than reencode.. (have mainconcept mpeg2 plugin) But sometimes i have many tapes low HDD space and not so mutch time so i searched and could not find any appz that can do direct capture from DV firmware input at mpeg2 (selectable bitrate would be gr8) i mean real time capture at mpeg2 Is there any combination of appz that can do this? I do not need perfect quality becouse here i am paid very low for what i do ;) PS: Would maybe adobe premier 1.5 and mainconcept mpeg2 plug in do DV capture? I know it can do analog capture direct in mpeg2....

Moving this thread to DV forum.

There are several nle applications that can capture directly to MPEG-2, e.g. Ulead VideoStudio. And there's an MPEG-2 encoder which I'd like to recommend: MainConcept MPEG Encoder freatures a capture module, which allows direct MPEG-2 captures from analogue and DV sources, and it's one of the best MPEG-2 encoders you can get. bb

I just did some test with MainConcept MPEG Encoder but captured from VIVO to full pal and i am very disapointed with CPU usage at default when quality wos set at 21 which is default (0-51 in option) i got 15 droped frames at 12 min capture time and mine procesor sempron 2800+ wos overclocked at 2.5Ghz... CPU usage wos from 55-90% so that wos not reason.. Also if i use higher quality (in encoder) than +25 i get sometimes 100% cpu usage and many droped frames + while i see preview cpu usage is 40% which is not realistic looks like bug... + i try disabling preview while capturin but that did not help Will try Ulead studio next... PS: WinDVR use like ~20% cpu at PAL mpeg2 capture.. for reference at 2.5Ghz amd and 1Gb ram i have PS: at work i have 2Ghz old sh... celeron wich way low end than mine OC amd.. so i hope i manage to find fast mpeg2 encoder.. WinDVR capture at PAL work at 50-60% cpu usage on this configuration but no option to do it from DV

Ulead Video Studio 9, DV->MPEG2 Ulead DVD Movie Factory 3, DV->DVD/SVCD/VCD

Is there any DV -> MPEG4 (Xvid) direct converter (something like MovieMaker, that can capture directly in WMV) ?

Exsate DV Capture Live, can capture DV live into Xvid, DivX, and WMV, it is a freeware application. CaptureFlux is another freeware application that can capture to WMV live.

Now I tried MainConcepts Encoder and Exsate DV Capture Live and I get nothing but crap from my DV-Cam. It's so frustrating. What the hell do I need to get 40 minutes from my MiniDV-Cassette onto a DVD ? A 2500+ Barton clocked to 2200 MHz (that's a 3200+ or something) and 1,5 GB RAM should be enough, doesn't? The resulting video has bad sound and it stutters a little. I tried different settings though. Why is my PC unable to convert realtime to DivX or MPEG-2 ? I'm sick of waiting for my Dad to buy a DVD-Recorder (where everything would be sooooooo easy :-( ) I can't beleave people on this world are able to stream the DV-sh*t to their harddrives when 90 Minutes result in a 130 GB-file !!!! So I'm expected to save one minute, convert it, save the 2nd minute, convert it, .... and at the end join the 90 files together? Tell me guys how do you do it, pleeaze

DV files are big. Thats kinda how it is... You should see one of my client's AVID system... She's got an ancient Power Macintosh 9600 dual 200 MHz with a pro BetaSP deck and super high quality capture card (way above anything I've ever seen, it uses like 8 freaking cables to connect to the machine). Even though the machine is nearly 10 years old, she's got like 2 gigs of ram in it, and a massive array of external SCSI boxes - something like 4 terabytes. Pretty sure she captures into a hardware assisted lossless codec, not totally sure though. It runs Mac os 8 :) But it works perfectly. No problems since she bought it. Do keep in mind that if you capture to MPEG-2 (or any other temporally predicted format for that matter), you wont be able to easily edit these files in the future. You can edit it, but it's messy...

DV files are big, but not 130GB's, an hour of DV video is 13GB's. For the best quality you are best to stick with using the DV AVI streaming from your cam to the computer. I would advise you get a entry level program like VideoStudio that can take you all the way from streaming the DV video onto your computer, to the final step of burning the DVD. Making DVD's from your DV cam is not an instant gratification process, there is a learning curve, but the end result can be worth the effort. The problem with DVD cam's is what you shoot is what you get, like when you forget the cam's is recording and you have it pointing at your shoes, you've got to live with that for the rest of your life and beyond.