digital video editing

[DVNT1]

I have a Panasonic Palmcorder PV-DV953 camera and I want to make high quality mpegs from it's videos.

It has the ability to directly make MPEG4 videos, but the best quality setting isn't good enough.

My thought is to purchase a laptop (might need portability) to capture the video feed on playback. Then make/edit better mpegs with it. Which laptop would work best?

Or is a device that can take the mini-DV tape and convert the contents to MPEG or AVI ?

Suggestions on either?

[phenious]

Ok... I couldnt tell what the camera was but you want it to have firewire for the BEST quality. I dont know of any devices that can capture and convert for you other then a PC so I would want a laptop that has a firewire connection to do the work. I bought a Dell Inspiron 5100 for the job. Works like a charm but I would have gotten a 5150 for a 7200RPM drive but I just couldnt afford it. Anyways. For the best quality I would capture with firewire in DV format and then work with the video fromt here and bring it down to Mpeg2 format. keep in mind an hour of video in DV format is about 11GB so its lots of HDD space and capturing it will work your hard drive which hurts your battery life so you will probably want a second primary battery for long trips. I like my laptop. It can play games (have the 64MB Radeon 7500 Mobility). Just be sure to opt for the 512MB of ram in one stick so you can upgrade with ease later as one of the dims is hidden from the user and requires lots of work when you have to take off the keyboard to replace it.

-: phenious :-