As of now, my conclusion is that I will only capture and burn in mpeg-2 formats.

My consumer-type machines cannot handle DV-AVI in such big files.

So my next question, how am I going to get the best MPEG-2 quality from what is available out there?

Any suggestions on or advice on that?

I've sat back and watched this for a while. Mict was right when he asked me if I was sure that DV format was mpeg2, which it wasn't, he was right. It is that dv-avi that has been pasted twice above.

Now here is the only 2 methods of proceeding that I see.

1. Purchase (or use one of the freeware ones, but probably purchase ones are easier to use, and you could charge for it) a program to convert that dv format to mpeg2 and then use another (probably purchase program) to author a DVD. Mpeg2 is the native DVD format, so if it was suggested above that mpeg2 is less common than anything else it is probably false. Nearly everyone has a dvd player, not everyone have a computer, and probably even fewer have a dvd player that will play divx/xvid.

2. Do everything in #1 except instead of mpeg2 convert to xvid or divx and burn to a CD. This means they have to watch on a computer or have a dvd player that is hooked to a tv (or any device that can read xvid connected to tv).

In any case, if all of the disks are of the same material, then once you have one you can just copy that rather than doing the long transcoding procedure every time.

I'm with you, encode one, copy the rest. But, I think that these are actually 400 different source material issues. Like I said before, 6 minutes @ 16 X, presto!

As somebody so eloquently informed me, "dude, he said they were 400 different tapes". Well all righty then, you take care of it!! DILLIGAF, I said in a loud voice, but only to myself, since I've already been chastised today for being my lovable old self. And in this very thread, no less.

I just wandered back from Best Buy with the Dollhouse and Battle Star Galactica DVD sets, my TV is working on a grand scale, Grace Park is more interesting than anything here, so it's off with me then, he said concluding his post with a "tweet".

I guess it's too late if you've already decided on the format, but anyway, if your source files are relatively small and light, then the DV-AVIs would be small and light too, as the compression wouldn't change. So if you're getting 13 GB out of something small, you're most likely capturing raw video (ie. no compression).

Yes yes anyway...If you have decided on compressing with mpeg-2 on a laptop (as captaincranky has kindly reminded you is a bad idea, I agree), then you yourself need the decode and encoding codecs. I don't know if windows comes default with them or if you put them on yourself. Some converters do come with their own codecs, but I recommend downloading k-lite mega codecs pack and installing with the "lots of stuff" option.

I think mpeg-2 quality depends on the bitrate.

The source is 400 X 1-hour long miniDVs.

thanks, I was just lookiing for the best codecs. I'll check then out. Any other suggestions as to which best encoder decoder to use?

thanks all