VirtualDub

[thewdawg]

Have used WinDV to transfer video to PC... I have noticed that when I view the transferred file it has a somewhat blurry/pixelated look. By accident, I recoded the file in VirtualDub to 'uncompressed' and the quality improved dramatically... does this sound legit?
In a nutshell... all I'm am trying to do is get a 'decent' quality file in a small size that I can edit (cut frames out of) and then view on a frame by frame basis... using DV camera to video baseball swings and them be able to view them on a frame basis for training. I like viewing in VD and Quicktime due to being able to step by frames. Any suggestions?

[redwudz]

What you see is not necessarily what you get.

If you are doing a DV transfer, it will be exactly what is on the DV tape. The program you are viewing it with is interpreting it through a software codec. I wouldn't really make a decision on the quality until you've burned it to DVD and viewed it on a TV. DV is interlaced. It will look strange unless viewed with a program that can handle interlace video.

If you plan to watch it on a TV when you are done with it, it will look different than it does on a computer monitor also because of the difference between computer monitors and TVs.

Go ahead and do your edits in VD. I use the Panasonic DV Codec for VD. The viewing codec makes only a small difference in the viewing.
Then encode the DV to MPEG-2, if it's going to DVD. Use a RW-DVD for testing until you have the look you want.

[daamon]

Hi thewdawg,

A number of things:

1) WinDV does exactly as you say - it merely acts as a means for transferring from a DV cam to the PC. It in no way affects the quality.

If you are experiencing quality issues, it's more likely to be the hardware - the cam itself, the firewire cable or the firewire card in the PC.

That said, there can be PC issues relating to the upgrading to SP2 for Windows XP. Microsoft have released a patch to address this problem with firewire (also known, and referred to by Microsoft, as IEEE1394).

2) VirtualDub isn't really designed to playback AVI files - though it can do it, it's not its prime function. You're better playing back the AVI with a dedicated player. There are loads around...

You're best getting one like PowerDVD or WinDVD as these take interlaced material (which your DV AVI files will be) and displays them properly on a progressive screen (i.e. your PC monitor) so that you don't get interlace lines on each frame.

I wonder... Is your blurry / pixelated look actually interlace lines?

3) Accidentallty saving to uncompressed AVI and appearing to improve the quality is an interesting one.

It's like this - quality can't actually ever be improved in a file. There are things that can be done to make it more pleasing to the eye, but actually improving the quality can't be done.

Saving to an uncompressed AVI won't suddenly create extra or improved quality from thin air - just because it's uncompressed doesn't mean that it takes compressed footage (DV AVI is lightly compressed using 25mbps) and adds in the bits that were discared during compression.

That said, I can't explain why your perception of an improved quality is happening.

[thewdawg]

Thanks for your help! I did burn both copies to DVD and on the TV you could not tell the difference... must be interlacing...???

Thanks Again!