miniDV playback

[rgoldwrx]

Hi, 2 issues perhaps someone can help me with, I have a Sony TRV33e mindv camera. I am recording in SP short play.

When I playback onto a CRT TV (sony 52cm), there appears to be a reasonable amount of quality loss than what I see on the 3" (ish) viewer on the camera. Ie the level of detail is less on TV.

When I plaback onto a Mac (could be XP too), and view in fullscreen (on a 19" lcd monitor), the qulaity is even worse, very pixelly and grainy.

Should I be seeing about the same quality on the TV, and the LCD as I'm seeing on the small lcd on the camera.

Any tests / dagnostics, etc I can do to sort out what the issues are. I would assume at least the the playback on the TV would be really close to the qulity I'm seeing on the camera lcd.

[Bjs]

No, the large the viewing screen is, the more these artifacts will show .

Like taking a stamp and trying to turn it into a 10" x 8" ... it looses quality the large it becomes from original.

[rgoldwrx]

that does make sense of course but..

if I watch a divx on a 5" screen its perfect, and then I increase the size of the screen to say a 50" screen, its also perfect (or at least very similar quality)

What I see is a rapid decrease in the quality on playback on a 50cm tv for my video camera though. Is there some technical evidence as to the loss expected, ie, dv records AxB pixels and tv's display x lines so on a tv of size blah you can expect a loss of t%

for example

Is there some science to the amount of loss/degradation expected

[highvolumeJP]

What makes matters worse is the poor quality MPEG encoder and video capture on those DVD Camcorder - I don't know why people use that piece of junk of a technology - stick to MiniDV - I've done tons of MiniDV to DVD encodings using TMPDVDAuthor 3 and the result was excellent and by far better than a straight copy from MiniDVD to DVD - Even at its highest recording quality, the MiniDVD cams produce average to poor video. The best videos you can get out of those is outdoor and very well lit scenes, and even so, video is way too soft.

[rgoldwrx]

yeah, mine is actually miniDV that I get poor playback on not miniDVD. my mistake

[edDV]

Hi, 2 issues perhaps someone can help me with, I have a Sony TRV33e mindv camera. I am recording in SP short play.

When I playback onto a CRT TV (sony 52cm), there appears to be a reasonable amount of quality loss than what I see on the 3" (ish) viewer on the camera. Ie the level of detail is less on TV.

The interlace TV represents the true quality assuming the TV is of high quality and properly adjusted.

DV video contains 720x576 or 414,720 pixels for Y luminance. These are sampled from an RGB filtered single 690,000 pixel sensor. According to your camera spec sheet, your LCD viewfinder has 123,200 down sampled pixels.
http://www.ciao.co.uk/Sony_Handycam_DCR_TRV33E__5601023#productdetail

Consumer color viewfinders are not intended for quality measurement or for exposure reference. They are only for picture framing.

When I plaback onto a Mac (could be XP too), and view in full screen (on a 19" lcd monitor), the quality is even worse, very pixelly and grainy.

A PC/MAC display is progressive. Your camera shoots interlace. If you view straight off the display card overlay, you are seeing two fields overlayed. If the scene is stationary, you are seeing noise from both fields. Don't expect great low light noise performance from a TR33 1/4.7" sensor.

If you view objects in motion, you are seeing two fields offset in time by 1/25 sec. They should exhibit line tearing.

If you want to view interlace video on a PC, you need a deinterlacing player like VLC (free with 6 manual deinterlace modes) or PowerDVD (pay with auto deinterlace).

Native resolution viewing would be done at 720x576 1x size (e.g. a window). If you go full screen you are asking your display card to interpolate to screen resolution (e.g. 1024x768). A typical Mac has low quality upscale from internal display chipsets.

Should I be seeing about the same quality on the TV, and the LCD as I'm seeing on the small lcd on the camera.

The interlace TV is showing reality. The Mac is showing two fields offset in time on a progressive display. The LCD viewfinder is showing a downsampled progressive representation.

Any tests / diagnostics, etc I can do to sort out what the issues are. I would assume at least the the playback on the TV would be really close to the quality I'm seeing on the camera lcd.

Nope. The camera LCD is for framing the shot. Nothing more.

Post some screen caps from VLC if you want comment on specific issues.

By the way, you did transfer to the Mac and PC over Firewire right? USB transfer gets you only 352x288 CIF which will be unacceptable. That is intended for webcam.

[rgoldwrx]

I am recording plenty of tapes now. Only issue at the moment is that to record with the passthrough from analog to digital I don't have control on when the recording stops. I'm setting it to stop at 95 minutes but sometimes the tape is 60 minutes. I'd like to keep these imports which are win dv format in this format for future editing, but at this stage I'd just like to trim the wastage from the end, in some cases about 10gb. Any ideas how I can do this, as save back as the same format. I've read that the previous version of windows live allows that, but short of messing around getting the old version on, is there a useful utility, or otherwise am I just as fine saving in the new windows live fomat, wmv I think, without losing any quality or editing potential.

thanks for any tip

[Richard_G]

As already pointed out by edDV, if you are viewing on a computer over USB the quality will be dire anyway. One thing that is going to cause a loss of quality when you plug your camcorder into the TV is how you are connecting the two together. If you are using the composite cable (yellow phono plug) then the quality is going to appear far poorer than it actually is. Use SVideo (if your camcorder and TV support it at the very least.

To see the actual quality you need to transfer to your computer over Firewire as DV and then view the footage in VLC or PowerDVD.

If you want to edit later, do not save as wmv, save as DV. DV is a bit for bit transfer of what is on your tape to your hard drive, anything else is compressed.