DV capturing quality

[Piotr Jaros]

I have a problem with capturing from my Sony PC9 DV Camcoder to my PC Computer via IEEE 1394. When the image moves slowly the quality is correct but when I try to capture faster moving action the image is not as smooth as when is played directly from camcoder to TV. Is it normal? I've tried many softwares to capture and in all of them I've used DV AVI with no compression (25 Mb/s) and other like MPEG I or MPEG II. I have Athlon XP 2000, Windows XP so I don't know what's the problem.

[idTV Nico]

I´m not sure, if I understood your question right, but the problem you describe sounds like the following:

PC Monitors work progressive, the frames are built up one after the other.

Video / DV-Camcorders / TV Systems work in interlaced Mode, wich means one frame consists of two fields - first all odd rows are printed - then even ones.

So if you have the possibility - I think you should be able to do the following with your camcorder:

Capture the video you want, connect the camcorder to your tv set and play back the file from your harddisk via the cam. Then the "problem" should disappear.

This is not a "problem" - it´s yust 2 different ways of hardware....

[idTV Nico]

Sorry - Something I forgot:

If you don´t want to play your video back on DV / VHS / DVD / (s)VCD but want to store it as an .avi for example for viewing it on your PC, you should DEINTERLACE your video - this means some kind of quality loss - but the quality on PC Monitors will be much better.

Hope, that helps
idTV Nico

[Piotr Jaros]

To: idTV Nico

It works!!!!! Thanks a lot for your advise!! Now I know ( finally ) I can play back my saved video( *.avi) from my hard disk on tv set via camcoder with the same quality as directly from cam. But *.avi video are too big to save them on CD or DVD so If you could tell me more about store my video on CD or DVD for viewing that on my PC( what kind of software would you recomend me) and also how should I store it on CD or DVD for viewing on DVD. I still have a problem with moving action which is not smooth.

[Linelle]

After reading this thread, I experimented with a short AVI I captured into Premiere. I exported it as an AVI, first with deinterlacing and again with.

The Deinterlacing export took about 5 minutes; the Interlaced export took less than 1 minute!

Both files are the exact same size.

When I play them using Windows Media Player, the quality is very good. The only difference I can detect is the Deinterlaced one is smoother. I used some flowers to compare and there's a little waviness with Interlaced.

I don't know what any of this proves

[bugster]

To: idTV Nico

It works!!!!! Thanks a lot for your advise!! Now I know ( finally ) I can play back my saved video( *.avi) from my hard disk on tv set via camcoder with the same quality as directly from cam. But *.avi video are too big to save them on CD or DVD so If you could tell me more about store my video on CD or DVD for viewing that on my PC( what kind of software would you recomend me) and also how should I store it on CD or DVD for viewing on DVD. I still have a problem with moving action which is not smooth.

Look to the left of this page and find the convert section. Here are many gudies for converting from one format to another. If you don't have a DVD burner I would suggest SVCD as your best bet. Once you have SVCD ready mpegs they need to be 'authored' (not difficult for the most basic play only discs). So look in the Authoring section for help.