DV AVI vs TV card capture in AVI xvid

[fishywishy]

so i have a bunch of 8mm and hi8 tapes that id like to archive in the future to my pc, and eventually store on an ext hdd (not burn to dvds). i recently got an ati tv card with mpeg2 capture. the mpeg2 captured video is acceptable, but i have been able to also capture raw avi from the composite input. obviously the raw avi file is huge, but even when encoded to xvid the video is higher quality then the mpeg2 captured on the hardware encoding of the card.

i also have an opportunity to buy a used sony d8 that can playback 8mm and hi8 tapes. i tested it and saw almost no difference between the dv-avi video from the d8 cam and the avid avi captured thru the tv card

for video that will absolutely never be put back on a tape, is there any reason to buy the d8 cam instead of just using the tv card and capture to xvid?

i have a quad core that handles encoding just fine fwiw

[edDV]

so i have a bunch of 8mm and hi8 tapes that id like to archive in the future to my pc, and eventually store on an ext hdd (not burn to dvds). i recently got an ati tv card with mpeg2 capture. the mpeg2 captured video is acceptable, but i have been able to also capture raw avi from the composite input. obviously the raw avi file is huge, but even when encoded to xvid the video is higher quality then the mpeg2 captured on the hardware encoding of the card.

i also have an opportunity to buy a used sony d8 that can playback 8mm and hi8 tapes. i tested it and saw almost no difference between the dv-avi video from the d8 cam and the avid avi captured thru the tv card

for video that will absolutely never be put back on a tape, is there any reason to buy the d8 cam instead of just using the tv card and capture to xvid?

i have a quad core that handles encoding just fine fwiw

I'm having trouble following.

1. ATI TV card - MPeg2 (is this live encoding?)
2. ATI TV card - Raw AVI encoded later to xvid.
3. Digital8 camera playing to DV format.
4. avid avi ????? Do you mean #2?

The problem is Hi8 is interlace. You are evaluating on a progressive monitor which favors xvid but is not a good indicator of picture quality.

The better solution for long term archive is "raw" uncompressed (or huffyuv) capture and then interlace MPeg2 encoding (8000 Kbps or above). Xvid will force a deinterlace which is destructive.

Next best, Hi8 to Digital8 "analog pass through" if the D8 camcorder supports pass through.

Next best, Digital8 playback of Hi8 to DV over IEEE-1394.

Last, deinterlaced Xvid encode from uncompressed or Huffyuv capture.

[fishywishy]

I'm having trouble following.

1. ATI TV card - MPeg2 (is this live encoding?)
2. ATI TV card - Raw AVI encoded later to xvid.
3. Digital8 camera playing to DV format.
4. avid avi ????? Do you mean #2?

The problem is Hi8 is interlace. You are evaluating on a progressive monitor which favors xvid but is not a good indicator of picture quality.

The better solution for long term archive is "raw" uncompressed (or huffyuv) capture and then interlace MPeg2 encoding (8000 Kbps or above). Xvid will force a deinterlace which is destructive.

Next best, Hi8 to Digital8 "analog pass through" if the D8 camcorder supports pass through.

Next best, Digital8 playback of Hi8 to DV over IEEE-1394.

Last, deinterlaced Xvid encode from uncompressed or Huffyuv capture.

yes the mpeg2 is live encoding

yes avid should be xvid, so #2

ive never noticed the xvid deinterlacing the video. i do it thru vdub, set at max quality. not sure of the bitrate

theres no pass thru, just playing the tape back in the d8 cam. but i got ur point, d8 cam it is

if its only a case of which codec to use, im actually curious if i could just encode the raw video captured from the tv card to dv-avi. i have a panasonic dv-avi codec for vdub

[edDV]

I'm having trouble following.

1. ATI TV card - MPeg2 (is this live encoding?)
2. ATI TV card - Raw AVI encoded later to xvid.
3. Digital8 camera playing to DV format.
4. avid avi ????? Do you mean #2?

The problem is Hi8 is interlace. You are evaluating on a progressive monitor which favors xvid but is not a good indicator of picture quality.

The better solution for long term archive is "raw" uncompressed (or huffyuv) capture and then interlace MPeg2 encoding (8000 Kbps or above). Xvid will force a deinterlace which is destructive.

Next best, Hi8 to Digital8 "analog pass through" if the D8 camcorder supports pass through.

Next best, Digital8 playback of Hi8 to DV over IEEE-1394.

Last, deinterlaced Xvid encode from uncompressed or Huffyuv capture.

yes the mpeg2 is live encoding

yes avid should be xvid, so #2

ive never noticed the xvid deinterlacing the video. i do it thru vdub, set at max quality. not sure of the bitrate

theres no pass thru, just playing the tape back in the d8 cam. but i got ur point, d8 cam it is

if its only a case of which codec to use, im actually curious if i could just encode the raw video captured from the tv card to dv-avi. i have a panasonic dv-avi codec for vdub

If by raw you mean uncompressed or huffyuv from the capture card, the better encode would be high bit rate interlace MPeg2 (720x480i/29.97). This could be max DVD rate ~9Mb/s 256Kb/s audilo or for special material up to 20 Mb/s for archive.

If by raw you mean a realtime MPeg2 encode, there is no point to further encoding.

A DV capture from a Digital8 camcorder can be archived as is. You may want to encode a DVD rate MPeg2 or xvid for playback on DVD media or a media player.

[2Bdecided]

Two points:

The most important deciding factor (IMO!) is whether the camcorder A>D or the capture card A>D copes best with the tapes you have. You say there's no difference. I have no experience with 8mm and hi8, so I'm reticent to comment, but this is surprising. Also pushing Hi8 tapes through a composite connection is reducing the quality of the signal, though a very good capture card with comb filering may be able to cover most of it.

If you get raw video into your PC, you can archive it in whatever format you want. I disagree that 9Mbps MPEG-2 is superior to DV in this respect - though it depends how noisy your tapes are, and whether you denoise them before encoding. Lossless HuffYUV is obviously best quality, high bitrate M-JPEG or MPEG-2 (e.g. 15Mbps) should be quite good too - sounds like the real-time MPEG-2 encoding on your capture card isn't that good, but non-real time software encoding may be better (but slower).


However, the fact that you've gone from an interlaced source (8mm/Hi8) to (most probably) a progressive file (x264) without even considering interlacing suggests something has gone slightly or very wrong, but it's not visible. What player are you using to watch the files?

Cheers,
David.

[jagabo]

Xvid has an interlaced mode. It doesn't deinterlace interlaced input. But if you don't set the interlaced option the chroma channels will be encoded incorrectly causing blending of colors between the two fields. Editors and players may or may not handle interlaced Xvid properly. MPEG 2 is the safer option.

[edDV]

Two points:

The most important deciding factor (IMO!) is whether the camcorder A>D or the capture card A>D copes best with the tapes you have. You say there's no difference. I have no experience with 8mm and hi8, so I'm reticent to comment, but this is surprising. Also pushing Hi8 tapes through a composite connection is reducing the quality of the signal, though a very good capture card with comb filering may be able to cover most of it.

I agree he should be using the S-Video connection.

If you get raw video into your PC, you can archive it in whatever format you want. I disagree that 9Mbps MPEG-2 is superior to DV in this respect - though it depends how noisy your tapes are, and whether you denoise them before encoding. Lossless HuffYUV is obviously best quality, high bitrate M-JPEG or MPEG-2 (e.g. 15Mbps) should be quite good too - sounds like the real-time MPEG-2 encoding on your capture card isn't that good, but non-real time software encoding may be better (but slower).

I didn't mean to imply 9Mbps or 20 Mbps MPeg2 was better than DV. I was describing the alternatives.

Realtime hardware MPeg2 will be the lowest quality.

I archive my Hi8 to DV-AVI and make an MPeg2 DVD.