I am wondering if I will loose much quality if I capture video from my camera as mpeg as apposed to DV.

Howdy Navigator, Speed of harddrive, capture device and mpeg bitrate settings will all play a factor. USB 2 is faster then firewire. Analog (yellow rca jack) probably the slowest, most dopped frames. Better to get the video on disc first before transcoding to mpeg. If you can capture from cam to pc with a lossless codec such as huffy, do so IF you have the HD space. Disclosing more about your capture devices and software/hardware encoder would give a clue as to what avenue to approach.

Hello Oil Tan I am using Pinnacle Studio 8 and 2.8 Gig Computer with 120 Gig P4 serial HD and 500 Meg ram and 800 Meg Mother board. I would like to use capture to mpeg because it takes up 1/5 the space on the HD. I have tried a bit and it looks ok on the TV. I was wondering just how much information I have lost and how much visible difference there actually is and what id the down side of doing this.

Mpeg2 bitrate should be set to 12 Mbits per sec. Thats bout as high a rate as it gets. Sounds like you have enough power to do what your after. And enough space on drive. If files look good, NO pixilation during fast motion in frames, stay with that. How much info you lose wont really be a factor if, after scrutinizing video, you are happy. Older ati cards used to report frame drop rate. No program I know of does that now.

Thanks for the help. I ended up doing a DVD of each and looking at them on the TV. The mpeg DVD was very clear but when there was a big change of scenery it became pixilated if that is the write word. It was not bad just the same but since I have the option of capturing in DV I will use that although it takes a lot longer.