From Sony Digital Handycam to .wmv or .avi - why so bad quality?

[Leo3049]

Hi,

I have a sony DCR HC17E PAL. The Handycam works with miniDV cassetes. I tried to save recorded films on a normal PC with Windows. First, I tried to do it with Sony own software. The files took 20 Gigabyte, and the film was of very low quality. Then, I tried to do it with MS Windows Media player. The produced files (in wmv Foormat) are of acceptable size, but still of rather low quality.
What do I do falsely? Can one record the films from miniDV to some Windows format in an acceptable quality? Or it is a normal situation?

Leo

[benbryant]

If your PC has FireWire (IEEE 1394) connection, you can use WinDV - a free but wonderful software to capture movie from camcorder into AVI

http://windv.mourek.cz/

Regards

[Leo3049]

Thank you. I just installed this code. It writes "Error: Can't find DV output pin". I googled, and it looks like everybody has the same problem. Are there perhaps any other ways to solve the problem?

[RFBurns]

What quality setting do you have the camera set for when recording?

You can do a test by feeding the camera signal during playback onto a regular monintor or tv, and see if the quality is there.

If it is, then its definately during capture that is messing with the quality. The capture that gave you the 21+Gb video files should have been uncompressed captures, meaning that it put into the files exactly what was being fed into the PC without compressing it. Hence the old saying "garbage in-garbage out". Thats why I suggested above to check the camera's recording settings and compare by feeding a monitor or tv that camera's signal and see if the quality is there.

Just using the camera's tiny LCD side monitor or viewfinder is not going to give you any idea of what quality is actually being recorded. You need a much larger screen to see if the camera is recording in high quality mode.

Also make sure you got good codecs installed in your PC. Most capture programs, including the software that comes with that camera, will default to the codecs already installed in your PC and use those. If those codecs are not good, then the end result will not be good either.