What is a good capture software for home movies (DV via 1394)? I have
used Roxio, but the quality seems OK at best. There are very few
settings to change on ROXIO. Also, should it be converted to MPEG,
AVI, ETC? I want the best possible quality to transfer to DVD.

Thanks!

Not sure exactly what you mean by "capture" -- the transfer
of DV from camera to computer via 1394 (firewire)) is
(usually ;-) ) a lossless process -- digital data only goes
across the interface. I use Scenalyzer to capture / split my
DV into segments http://www.scenalyzer.com and it works
great, but many programs will import the data from the camera
via the firewire. There should be no signal degradation -- if
anything is lost, it is usually in the form of dropped frames which
are very noticeable in a jumpy picture. Editing the DV avi file
on your computer is a different matter and does affect the quality.
There are a number of editors out there Vegas is good, Sony
Screenblast is good, Ulead Media Studio Pro is good there are
others in various price ranges with various features - search for
video editors (and look through the back threads in rec.video.desktop)
for good information.

mikey

"kesmon" <kesmon_junk@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:d0fefc87.0410260739.6a61f814@posting.google.c om...

"kesmon" wrote ...
Dunno why there would be *any* settings. "Capture" of DV via
Firewire is really just a one-for-one transfer of the bitstream from
the camcorder to a disk file. Should be completely neutral to
"quality". Remember we're talking digital here.

Hard to answer without knowing what the rest of your system
is. For example, what are you using to author and burn DVDs?

iMovie