AVI to DV

[stymie]

I've captured some home video to AVI format using Huffyuv from my analog camcorder connected to a TV tuner card. I would like to archive it to DV-AVI format and save it to a DVD for future use/editing. Is it possible to convert the AVI file to DV-AVI? (I do not have a digital camcorder or any other hardware such as Canopus ADVC-100 for conversion. ) How about re-capturing directly to DV-AVI using a TV tuner card? If possible, which would method would produce the best quality DV? How would this compare to a digital camcorder capture to DV? (original capture was with iuVCR, could not get VirtualDub to work )

[The village idiot]

I guess once never really is enough

[peterrules4eva]

Im hoping you've captured at a standard res (ie 720x576 for PAL and what ever the crappy ntsc res is)

You could try messing around in premiere (ie loading a new DV Project and importing your video then exporting the avi). Or as a cheaper (but not totally free) is to get the MainConnecpt DV Codec (http://www.mainconcept.de/products/dvcodecWin.shtml) and use VDub to convert your video. There are a couple of other DV Codecs avaible on the codecs page on this site including a freeware(?) Panasonic Codec.

Huffyuv is a lossless format - so it wont make much difference in quality if your capturing directly to DV or not - you'll still loose a tiny bit of quality converting to DV anyways (DV IS LOSSY unlike what most people think). You should be able to capture directly from iuVCR using the MainConecept codec.

But as it's comming from an Analogue Source - you've already lost a lot of quality anyways .

[donpedro]

(DV IS LOSSY unlike what most people think).

Please elaborate on this.... My understanding is that if you convert to DV AVI it's lossy. If you capture from DV camcorder via firewire into DV AVI it is lossless (compression is allready done by camcorder). Am I right ? If not please explain.

[stymie]

I tried the MainConcept DV codec and converted the AVI to DV using VirtualDub. The original AVI was captured using iuVCR to HuffyUV at 720 x 480. I was also able to capture directly to DV using iuVCR with either the [VFW] MainConcept DV codec or [DS] DV encoder. Which method would produce a better SVCD (from DV) using TMPGenc? Also in general, will VHS/8mm analog-->DV-->SVCD be as good in quality as VHS/8mm analog-->avi-->SVCD? I would like to be able to archive the original video in DV format for future use as well as create custom/edited SVCDs (w/ best quality practical) with the captured video.

[yg1968]

I am not sure why you need to convert analog to DV if your goal is to create SVCDs (which uses mpeg-2). Archiving DV on a DVDR or CDR is not a good idea given that DV requires 13 gig per hour. You are better off archiving DV on DV tapes if you have a digital camcorder. If your goal is to make SVCD then you can capture in huffy and then encode to mpeg-2. You have no need for DV in this situation.

DV is lossy. Huffy is less lossy than DV but it isn't truly "lossless". By definition, any compression (even Huffy) will give you some loss of data. DV's compression ratio is 5:1. Huffy's ratio is 3:1. If you are filming in DV, you are better off staying in DV to avoid further loss of data. But if your source is analog and you are using an analog capture card then you are better off capturing with Huffy. In any event, most of the loss of data will occur when you encode to mpeg.

I tend to use DV because I have a digital camcorder which I also use for capturing (since it has a passthrough feature). This gives me good results because the captured DV is in sync and I do not drop any frames. I have no need to use Huffy since I do not use an analog capture card. In a nutshell, use DV if you have a DV capture card (or a digital camcorder with a passthrough feature) but use huffy if you have an analog card.