Guys:
I use vegas Video 3.0 to capture & edit my videos (source is DV: using Vegas Video capture in avi at the best posttible quality). After I done with edting the video, I render the project As avi (video for windows)file using Vegas's "NTSC DV" CODEC (NTSC 720 x 480)at the best possible quality. and then I use TMPGEnc to encode it to mpeg2 (DVD compliant)...

The problem is the captured and rendered(after editing) both avi files, looks always crapy...Is there way to improve the quality of avi files in Vegas Video - both captured or rendered... (My all DVs are good quality DVs)

Any advice will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance..
Geek!!!

Hi. If you are running windows xp, then the built-in windows movie maker will capture your dv footage through firewire directly to avi.
If you want the footage as mpeg2 then practically all capture cards do this by default - i have a geforce4 ti4600 128mb graphics card with video in and out. The program i use is intervideo wincoder. It has defaults for pal and ntsc vcd or dvd. All you have to do is push record and it captures in real-time at the desired quality - 1hr of video is usually about 2.5GB.

When converting to avi, programs like tmpgenc and premier can sometimes crash. Intervideo's winproducer handles all this fine though - you'd expect it to if its made by the same guys who made the capture program.

Hope this helps

Luke

Luke:
Thanks for the response..I am running Windows XP. I have ATI Radeon AIW 8500DV card. It captures analog as well as DV footage. It also captures mpeg2 directly without any problem.. Though I am looking for the best quality AVI. I never had any problem with Vegas Video or TMPGEnc. So far I have made 100+ videos none of the above applications has crashed ever. All I am looking for highest possible video quality (AVI). I do lots of personal video edting using Vegas video and I create the avi file and then import the avi into TMPGEnc. But when I rendered edited vieo in Vegas video in avi format, It looks crapy...Yes, TMPGEnc makes it little better quality for DVD compliant mpegs but I am still looking for better quality AVIs...I will defenately try out the movie shaker to capture DV footage...I never tried that software...but I will try it out on next project ...

Thanks for your response..
Any suggestions are still welcome on this matter.
Geek!!

Than

I'm not big on directly capturing to AVI, but I have a couple of suggestions. Try using your AVI card to capture with MMC, not Vegas Video. Also, you can try using Virutal Dub to capture. Use either no codec or a lossless one like Huffy. Maybe Vegas Video just isn't very good at AVI capturing. I don't know. Some programs are definitely better than others.

What I would do Is Not Render your Project before you encode it to Mpeg2, it seems that you are looseing the Quality when rendering it to the MS DV Codec, try useing the Encoder in Vegas Video to encode it to Maybe get a Better DV Codec and render it to that Codec....if you had Premier you could Use Tmpgenc or CCE right off the Timeling without haveing to make an AVI file and Not loose as Much quality in the Re-Rendering ...

Luisifer:
Thanks, I think you are the only power user of Vegas around..Can you suggest me any good encoder that I can use it with Vegas? I can use the Mainconcept (built in Vegas) but I still can't get the desired mpeg quality with it. And that is the only reason I render the project as AVI & import it to the TMPGEnc; that gives me better quality mpeg2 than Mainconcept.

The Only Encoder that Can be used By Vegas Video is the MainConcept one that comes with it so the only way to get better Mpeg encodeing withing the Program is to use a Different Program to capture and edit your DV Files Like "Adobe Premier6.5" which you can use a Whole Bunch of different Mpeg2 encoders with Like CCE and Procoder and Ligos and comes with a MainConcept encoder..Luckily I have a Bunch of different Programs for DV Capture and Editing that I can use to try to get better quality....