DV capture quality question, but I think I know the answer

[scott_w]

Hello all,
Like alot of others I am new to the DV world so bear with me. I bought a Sony DCR-HC40 with the Pinnacle Studio Bundle (Firewire Card, cable and sofware). I bought this camera to take video and be able to save/watch it on my computer in good quality but from what I have read I think I misunderstood what a (this) DV camera can do.

From what I understand reading other posts, atleast 10 posts so far and I was only on page 3 , the purpose of being able to copy the video to your computer is to edit and save back to a tape or DVD or archive to your computers hard drive, right? What I thought was I could take a video and watch a crystal clear video on my computer but that does not seem to be the case. Again like the other posts when I watch the video on my TV it's fine bit when I capture the RAW footage to my computer it's blurry, distorted and has lines thru it, but I understand this is interlacing and the video is meant for a TV, right?

I can still watch on my computer after re-encoding but it will not look as good as on the TV, right?

Am I understanding this right????
I was starting to get frustrated with the $700 I spent on a new camera and the picture looked like crap but I think I was expecting to much and that was my problem.

Thanks for letting me vent and I appreciate and advise or comments given!!

[bugster]

You CAN watch your DV video on your PC at original or close to original quality. There are several possible ways of doing this.

First, play the video with a software DVD player such as PowerDvd or WinDvd. I know PowerDvd will de-interlace on the fly for DVD sources, not sure about DV but I think it does, so give it a try.

Second option is de-interlace and re-encode. This will certainly cause some quality loss but probably not as much as you are seeing at the moment. It will also allow you to shrink the size of the videos significantly, saving a lot of HD space.

[scott_w]

Thanks for the quick reply,
I did try the PowerDVD thing before but it will not play the "RAW" stream, I have to convert it to a DVD quality MPEG and it does play and get rid of the "lines" but the picture is still blurry. I am playing this on a 19" flat panel monitor, not sure if that makes the picture look worst or not.

Is it something I am doing wrong??

[junkmalle]

There are a few issues for you to think about (I will use NTSC values throughout):

1) Pinnacle Studio has a lowres editing mode where it captures from the camera at low resolution for editing. Then when you generate the final output it reads the hires DV off the tape to create the output. It does this to save space on the hard drive while editing.

2) If I remember correctly, even when working in full DV mode, Studio doesn't show the full 720x480 picture while editing.

3) Yes, the horizontal comb-like lines you are seeing interlace artifacts. In case you don't fully understand interlaced video I'll give a quick explanation. Video from your camcorder isn't really 30 frames per second, it's 60 fields per second. Each field was taken at a different time. Anything that moves will appear in a different place in each field. But, each field doesn't contain all 480 scanlines of the image, they contain only half of them -- every other scanline. So if one field contains lines 0,2,4,6..., the next will contain 1,3,5,7... When the computer displays the image it combines two consecutive fields to make a full 480 line image. But of course, you get the comb-like artifacts whenever there is motion.

4) Some programs (and codecs) will automatically deinterlace while displaying on the computer. There are two basic methods of doing this. The first is to display only one field at a time (called "bob"). The other is to blur the two fields together (called "weave"). The first method is free of the comb-like artifacts but may flicker depending on the refresh rate of your monitor. The second method makes moving objects look blurry.

5) If your final output is going to be DVD or DV tape, just leave the video interlaced. It will look OK when viewed on TV because TV displays 60 fields a second (ie, you don't see both fields at the same time).

6) Ignoring the interlace artifact issues, DV on a monitor just doesn't look as clear as it does on a TV. This is partly because you are sitting only a foot away from your monitor so you can see how blurry the image is. I believe part of it has to do with the fact that most televisions have a sharpening filter to make the video look clearer. That's because televisions start with a signal that's inherently a bit fuzzy, whereas a computer monitor normally starts with a crystal clear picture (I'm talking about the normal computer generated desktop, not the DV video). So, in terms of clarity, the image on the computer is probably closer to what's actually on the video tape.

6) If your camcorder has a progressive mode you might consider using it. Progressive camcorders record 30 frames per second rather than 60 fields per second. This will get rid of all the interlace artifacts "at the source", at the cost of slightly less fluid motions. Of course, when the camcorder sends the picture to a normal TV it sends 60 fields per second -- but each pair of fields come from the same point in time, the same picture.

[scott_w]

junkmalle,
Thanks alot you explained a TON and I know alot more now than I did before.

I don't think my cam has progressive mode but I will check, that would be the best.

Again thanks!!!!

[junkmalle]

Scott_w, Glad you found the information useful!

[MpegEncoder]

Thanks for the quick reply,
I did try the PowerDVD thing before but it will not play the "RAW" stream, I have to convert it to a DVD quality MPEG and it does play and get rid of the "lines" but the picture is still blurry. I am playing this on a 19" flat panel monitor, not sure if that makes the picture look worst or not.

Is it something I am doing wrong??

I see so many people confusing terms and ideas when it comes to DV.

First, the term "RAW" DV is rather misused. When you transfer (not capture, but that's another terminology problem) DV from you camcorder to your computer you want it to be in DV-AVI format. There are many programs that work great for this, like WinDV, DVIO, etc.

DV-AVI is a compressed format, but many people call it uncompressed. They are wrong.

To "play" or "convert" these DV-AVI files, you must have a DV codec installed. You don't need the DV codec during the transfer process.

Once you get this far, you should not have any problems playing the file with PowerDVD, Windows Media Player, etc.

[scott_w]

MpegEncoder thanks for correcting me. I do appologize I am new to all of this, as you can guess

I didn't think PowerDVD could play AVI's but you would know better than me.

I did figure out my original problem after futher reading. My video's do play alot better on my TV and the clip I was using was indoor's and my camera does an "OK" job indoor's but outside it looks great. I also transfered to a DVD and played on my TV and it looked good.

Thanks to this forum I have a better understanding now...so thanks to you and everyone else who helped me for hanging out here and answering questions for eveyone.

[Tfp]

yeah play the avi file back in Power DVD it interlaces or whatever in there and you don't see any lines