Video Quality

[aardvarkno2]

Hi! I'm a fairly new recording technician learning the ropes and all that with my university music department.

I've got several people from our department that want a DVD copy of their recital performances this semester. We webcast everything from our recital hall, but the quality isn't very good for putting on a DVD. I'm wondering if anyone knows a good way to touch it up and make it nicer to put on a DVD to give to these people?

My camera is hooked to the computer via VC-500 "OneTouch Video Capture" and we webcast through Windows Media Encoder. I'm going to hook the camera through the FireWire port, but I don't currently have one yet. On the computer, we have several programs for video editing:

1. VirtualDub
2. WME
3. Ulead DVD (whatever it is called??)
4. Windows Movie Maker

I've been trying different filters to get rid of some of the blocking, perhaps interlacing, but I'm not sure what to do... Any suggestions? (Screen Shots Below - I'm also a visual learner!)

Any advice is appreciated. Thanks!!

[redwudz]

Take one of your regular recordings and drop it into MediaInfo and post a screenshot. Or post a short representative sample. It helps a lot to know what format and what parameters the video has. In general, filtering may remove some of the noise, but it will also generally remove some of the video quality. You need a high quality source video to make a decent looking DVD.

A DVD is interlaced, so you don't want to be removing that. Interlaced video may look bad on a computer monitor if you don't use a proper player. Blocking is usually caused by encoding at too low a bitrate.

And welcome to our forums.

[lordsmurf]

Garbage in, garbage out.
While filtering can improve, this situation is not likely to yield much for results.

[edDV]

You should record the performance on the camcorder, then later transfer to the computer via Firewire (IEEE-1394), then author a DVD with your ULead (Corel) DVD movie factory software.

[True Colors]

My camera is hooked to the computer via VC-500 "OneTouch Video Capture" and we webcast through Windows Media Encoder. I'm going to hook the camera through the FireWire port, but I don't currently have one yet.

I have a VC500.

A couple of things....... I'm not sure that I would use the VC500 for this particular application you are describing unless you have a relatively good computer(at least dual core or better). Even then I would still try a couple of other options.

If you do want to continue using the VC500 though....... are you using the highest quality settings in it for recording(the DVD quality setting)? If so great. If not, then go under settings---->record---->then click on "DVD."

....... other options besides the VC500

First, the firewire direct to the PC is a very good choice. I would start with that. Get some software to capture the firewire feed and you should see a big improvement over what you are currently getting.

A second possibility for you would be to get a DVD recorder with a firewire input. You should be able to find a good one at any electronics store for 150 bucks or less(I paid less than 100 for mine).

Here is a comprehensive list of DVD recorders from Cnet for you to look at.

http://reviews.cnet.com/dvd-recorders/?filter=501414_5266462_&tag=mncol;srt&sort=lowPrice9+asc

The main benefit with a recorder is that it would create your DVD for you as opposed to you having to author the DVD yourself with your computer. If you have lots of different DVD's to do then this could save you some time. Another side benefit is that the DVD recorder is more portable than a computer. And lastly, it would be handling some of the work for you while your computer would be free to do other things(such as making extra copies of the DVD's or whatever).

TC