I normally capture analog video as DV over firewire (VCR into my DV camera into my PC). I have a laptop and external hard drive, so capturing uncompressed video is out of the question. While pondering the quality lost in converting to DV and then MPEG2 (for DVD), I wondered if it would be best to just capture analog video directly to MPEG2. Do external (usb) TV tuners have better or even comparable MPEG2 encoding compared to my current workflow? Or do they suffer from real-time encodes whereas my DV to MPEG2 conversion is multi-pass?

Also, I've never used software to cut MPEG2s along the GOP so as not to recompress them. Obviously, my goal would be to splice my original captured MPEG2s together onto a DVD without ever recompressing them, so there is no generational loss from capture to output. Has anyone worked like this? It seems limiting compared to DV in Vegas, which is much more malleable than cutting along a GOP.