Question about importing movie from Hi8 into imovie, the burning to dvd...

[VoodooDaddy]

I hope I can explain this clearly enough. Ive never really done this before until last night so this is why I have a few questions. I want to copy the tape to the computer and burn at the highest quality I can.

I dont have any problem importing the movie from the camera to the computer. I have a Dazzle Hollywood bridge to convert from analog to digital. Last night I imported a 30min of video. That resulted in 1 DV file 7.04gb in size.

I imported this into iMovie 08, made a very simple edit (trimmed about 5 seconds off each end), then did the "media share" so I could send it to iDvd. I selected the highest setting, but the end result was a file only 768mb in size. It went from 7gb to 768mb?!?!

Opened iDvd, opened the iMovie project, made a very simply menu, and burned. The total size of the disc when it was done was 1.6gb.

I watched this on my bigscreen tv and yes, it looked pretty decent for having been converted from analog to digital, then having it compressed who knows how many times.

Is there anything else I can do to improve quality? Am I doing something wrong, or is it common for a 7gb DV file to only result in a 768mb dvd-format movie?

[ppc_michael]

MPEG-2 (the format used with DVDs) is typically significantly smaller than DV. To improve compression, you would probably have to move to the Final Cut Suite. HOwever, if you're going from VHS anyway, I don't really think it's worth the hassle.

[VoodooDaddy]

Originally Posted by ppc_michael

MPEG-2 (the format used with DVDs) is typically significantly smaller than DV. To improve compression, you would probably have to move to the Final Cut Suite. HOwever, if you're going from VHS anyway, I don't really think it's worth the hassle.

Well that answers that for me. I was just shocked that a 7gb file after running through iMovie essentially was compressed to just a little under 800mb. The final dvd size was 1.6gb like I said, but I expect the rest of that was the menu made in iDVD.