Unstable DV AVI Playback

[Michael33]

Gentlemen: I am seeing really serious vertical jitter when I view the dv avi I capture from my mini dv camera.

I capture in either Windows Movie Maker 2 or Ulead Video Studio 6. It doesn't make any difference what application I use to view the dv avi - Windows Media Player 9, Movie Maker or Video Studio - the vertical jitter is quite bad.

Something is only going wrong when the dv avi is played back (viewed) because I can convert it into a perfectly good MPEG 1 or MPEG 2 file with no visible jitter whatsover.

Any ideas? Codec problem?
I'm sure some of you have seen this before. Any and all feedback appreciated!

[Michael33]

I've found the problem (keep in mind this is a brand new WinXP computer with everything at default settings).

Windows Media Player>Tools>Options>Performance>Advanced>Video Acceleration - untick "Use video mixing renderer". Voila, DV AVI plays without a glitch (jitter, that is). Hard to understand why others haven't made mention of this problem, not like I'm trying to play DV AVI on some old PC.

I got the clue for this when I changed (lowered) the preview quality in Ulead's VideoStudio and the DV AVI jitter suddenly disappeared.

Any comments??

[yg1968]

The jitters that you mention is called interlacing. It has been mentioned by others before on this forum. By lowering the resolution of the playback, you are removing the effects of interlacing. A better option is to use a program such as PowerDVD which deinterlaces upon playback. Interlacing doesn't look good on a computer but it looks fine on a TV. If your are converting to DVD, you can ignore these interlacing effects as they will not show on your TV. Actually interlacing on a TV is a good thing as it makes for a smother image given the higher frames per second (29.97 x 2 fps).

[Michael33]

yg1968:
Thanks for your feedback, although I must admit I'm a bit skeptical about why Windows Media Player 9 on a new machine wouldn't be able to play DV AVI properly without some serious intervention on the user's part (unticking "Use video mixing renderer"). The image literally bounced, quite erractically, as to make it unviewable (unacceptable) for all practical purposes. I might think the effects of interlacing would be more consistent, although this is just a presumption on my part. Granted, the particular monitor used for viewing may play a role in how the interlacing manifests itself (some monitors may tolerate it better, maybe mine tolerates it less - so interlacing didn't seem the culprit).
Thanks again.

[yg1968]

Some DV codec will allow you to de-interlace DV upon playback but the one in microsoft directshow doesn't. There is a reason why Microsoft decided not to de-interlaced upon playback but I don't remember what it is. Lowering the resolution to half means that only one field is played thus interlacing problems disappears. If you have PowerDVD, try playing your DV file at full resolution, you will not see this jittering effect as PowerDVD de-interlaces upon playback.