DV Codec Capture/Encode Quality

[jdfrey1]

I have been searching and reading quite a bit over the last few weeks and learning about DV capturing and encoding. I am somewhat of a newbie but I am getting more comfortable with what I'm working with.

I have a Sony Digital8 camera that I transferred some video clips over firewire using Premiere. I edited, added some titles and encoded into a MPEG-2 that I plan on putting on a DVD. I also exported the completed project back to tape to "preserve" the video in the best quality possible, next to keeping the original files of course.

My problem is this.....If I re-capture my previously edited video from the tape in Premiere, the video looks very bad and blocky. I get a similar result if I encode the video in Premiere to AVI as a DV file. I have found that I can use Scenalyzer and the quality looks much better but it is dependant on which DV codec I use. I've tried numerous DV codecs like the Mainconcept demo, Canopus DV, and Panasonic. My readings tell me that there are slight DV codec differences but that I shouldn't be able to really spot a big difference. However, the only one to me that produces acceptable quality to me is Canopus. All the others produce the blocky product that I talked about before. Is there something that I'm not doing correctly? I've heard that many people are very happy with the Panasonic and I would like to get it working because the price of the Canopus DV encoder is very expensive!

Any help or direction of information would be appreciated. I have also started this thread on Doom9 but posted here also for exposure.

[jdfrey1]

I'm going to post the solution to my question as I found this out on Doom9. The problem was not the codec at all. It happened to be that the settings in Windows Media Player for playback were reduced causing the grainy look. I have changed this to full resolution and now have no problems with the Panasonic Codec.

Now what I do for my capturing and encoding is the following:

1) Capture DV from my camera over Firewire with Scenalyzer as a Type-2 AVI.

2) Edit/cut/join and add any effects/transitions in Adobe Premiere.

3) Export as a DV Avi using the Panasonic DV Codec.

4) Export the DV Avi to tape using Scenalyzer to "preserve" the edited DV quality.

5) Encode any number of ways:
a. CCE to MPEG-2 for DVD/SVCD
b. VirtualDub with DivX 5 codec

I am very pleased with the results and feel that I have a good handle on what I want to do now.

[yg1968]

Where did you get the Panasonic DV codec? I can't seem to find on which site to download it from.

[jtor]

1) Capture DV from my camera over Firewire with Scenalyzer as a Type-2 AVI.

2) Edit/cut/join and add any effects/transitions in Adobe Premiere.

3) Export as a DV Avi using the Panasonic DV Codec.

4) Export the DV Avi to tape using Scenalyzer to "preserve" the edited DV quality.

...just a thought:

- can you not skip step 3, and simply export your timeline from Premiere to tape? I don't use Premiere (I'm using the software 'for' my card, and it lets me do that), but considering the price tag, I would assume Premiere can do that.

Yes, I know that you can delete the intermediate AVI after you export it back to tape...but still, that's 2 steps less (exporting to file, and deleting file).

Like I said, just a thought.

[yg1968]

I found the Panasonic DV codec:

www.panasonic.co.jp/customer/video/download/downmdv1.html