IS there a difference in quality for DV AVI Captured video?

[omnpotnt]

This may be a loaded question, because I know how touchy everyone can be about their "Favoritre software"...but here goes:

If' i'm capturing video from a digital camcorder, editing, then outputting back to Digital video quality AVI format,, are different programs going to give me different quality video, since it's essentially the same standard? I've used both Video Explosion deluxe, and Studio 9, and I"m not sure that THe studio 9 is quite as good as the VE outputted file. I'd love any comments or suggestions!

Thanks very much in advance!

[daamon]

Hi omnpotnt,

I'm having an educated guess here, so don't take it as definite and, anyone else, please feel free to enhance or contradict my belief as I've wondered this too...

When you "capture" from a DV camcorder, you're actually only transferring data to your hard drive from a different medium - a bit like moving a file from a floppy disk to your hard drive. So, there's no quality loss. That bit I'm sure of...

I suspect that capturing DV AVI requires a DV codec to be installed and used by the application you're capturing with. The efficiency (right word?) of the codec, I think, is what determines the quality of the captured DV AVI.

Likewise, when exporting DV AVI after editing, the quality of the ouput revolves around the codec used.

If that's the case, then it's not so much the programs, but more so the codecs they use / come with. For example, I use Adobe Premiere v6.0 and that comes with the Mainconcept DV codec and is considered to be good. But I know that you can get a different codec by Panasonic (the Panasonic DV codec) - this is also considered to be quite good (and it's free).

There are other codecs, including some other good ones - check out "Codecs" in the "Tools" section.

To see what codecs you've got installed, use GSpot (doesn't work on MPEGs) or AVICodec.

I hope that helps (and that it's correct!).

[omnpotnt]

Thanks very much for your input, it makes as much sense, or more...than anything thus far. have a great day!

[Beavis]

Yes, you won't get into a situation where any quality loss is even possible until you're doing any rendering of edited video- and even then unless you're using the world's worst NLE, it will only be affecting the specific parts that have changed- ie, simply cut commercials out of something and your rendered video that's left will be the same as the original, but add fades, transitions, text overlays, etc. then that part will be re-encoded. The beauty of DV is that generation loss over a couple encodes is usually not much of a factor. I suppose some codecs could be better than others but I wouldn't get TOO hung up on it unless you're seeing something obvious that needs to be dealt with.

[daamon]

@ omnpotnt: No problem. Have a good day yourself. For me, it's nearly the weekend...!

@ Beavis: Thanks for the confirmation. Have yourself a good'un too.