U-matic to DVD- How to preserve quality?

[Derek Roff]

We have a large block of educational material on 3/4" U-matic video 
tapes, for which we own the copyright.  We would like to select 
scenes from this material, and produce new instructional DVDs. 
During our test phase, we copied from the U-matic tapes to mini-DV, 
linking the composite video output from the U-matic VCR into the 
analog AV-inputs of a Sony TRV-30 camcorder.  The camcorder digitized 
the analog video, which we brought into the computer via FireWire, 
and edited with iMovie and Final Cut Pro.  The final step is creating 
the DVD using DVD Studio Pro.  Results were acceptable, but loss of 
video quality was noticeable.

The conversion to DV25 via the camcorder, and then resampling to 
MPEG-2 for the DVD, is something I would like to avoid, but I don't 
know how to approach it.  The editing that we need to do is very 
simple- for the most part, just defining start and stop points for 
each scene.  In a few cases, we want to eliminate the current sound 
track, and add music or narration.

Can anyone suggest a superior procedure for this project (or tell me 
not to bother, that I won't see any significant increase in quality)? 
Would it work to record from the U-matic VCR to a stand-alone DVD 
recorder, rip the data from that DVD in the computer, edit somehow, 
and create a new DVD from there?  What software can do simple editing 
of MPEG-2?

Derek Roff
Language Learning Center, MSC03-2100
Ortega Hall Rm 129, 1 University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001
505/277-7368, fax 505/277-3885
Internet: derek at unm.edu