Quality issues

[ob1_1999]

I have recently had my video camera stolen (a Sony DCR TRV 18) and am going to get a new camera. With my previous camera I had loss of quality when i tranferred on to a CD for playback, or made the picture bigger on the PC. Is there any way around preventing the quality loss, or was it just the camera I had? I was capturing via firewire and then using movies maker.


Also are there any qulaity differences between Mini DV and the new HDD camera once converted to the PC? I am looking at getting a HDD camera, any thoughts on if they are any good? And if they are, any suggestions on which one?

Thanks, I appreciate any feedback.

[Baldrick]

Transferred to CD? In what video format? if you keep it in dv-avi format you wont lose any quality...but it's huge...if you convert to dvd-video on dvd media you shouldn't lose that much quality if you use good software.

[ob1_1999]

I trasnferred to CD in AVI format. I have tried DV-AVi and large quality in windows movie make. Both gave similar/same results.


What do you mean by good software, I am not quite sure what good is?

Cheers

[thecoalman]

I trasnferred to CD in AVI format.

Bear in mind AVI is not a format and can contain many types of video such as DV-AVI. A rough estimate would give you about 4 minutes (probably less) in total of DV-AVI on 750MB CD. That's all that will fit.

As mentioned there is no quality loss when transferring from a DV cam to a computer via firewire, it's a bit for bit copy. Any quality loss you perceive is probably caused by whatever player you are using to view the video. Regardless of what player you use it will never look as good as it does on TV. Computer monitors are progressive and TV's are interlaced. To properly judge the conversion quality you have to play it back on a TV.

DV-AVI icretes a huge file, about 14 gigs per hour and can only be playbacked on TV from your cam. For playback you need to author a compliant DVD. Using the proper methods and good software will give you a DVD that should be almost indistinguishable from the video if it was played directly from the cam.

Try Ulead Video Studio as a starter, there are better products but this is good place to start for a begginer

[guns1inger]

Depending on how the camera records to it's HDD, you may find the quality is less than DV quality, and harder to edit without further quality loss.

Movie Maker is fine for quick edits, however it only outputs to DV-avi or WMV, and it's wmv templates are not the best. Papa John's templates provide much better quality output. Secondly, any effects etc that you create or add in WMM are processed at 640 x 480 internally. If you are working toward DVD resolution output then the effects get processed at a medium resolution, then resized back up.

Finally, if you go to something like Divx/Xvid on CD and reduce resolution and use a typical, low bitrate, quality will also suffer.