DV Capture Quality Problem

[Holden]

TheGr8Steve: I'll give Ulead Studio 7 a try before I slash and burn my video codecs. Hopefully tonight.

[vhelp]

Hi guys, TGIF to all

@ Holden..

You seem to be one who installs many items and somehow, in time, looses
control of certain funtionality within

IMO, you've got too many things going on that has contributed to far too
many problems w/ your DV endeavors. You need to start fresh. Codecs and
all.

I think that the best tip I can give you now, if REINSTALL everything (windows
and things) from scratch, and start again.

Once you get things from stratch, all your troubles will probably dissapear
from you w/out further questions.

But, this time, Ghost your setup, so that if things get messy, you can start
again, w/out the need and time waisted in re-installing everying all over again.

* Yes, reinstall windows from stratch. Prepferbly on a 1gig partition, and use
that as your root for windows, and everything else major like Office products
and things, for another drive e, D:\

* Ghost it next, and you're ready. Should things get messy, you only need to
reimage back to your 1gig like new again.

Do give the above some thought,
-vhelp

[Holden]

vhelp: I do have a 2GB ghost image of a fresh install fully patched, but I don't want to go through that pain just yet. Plus, my PC has only been running for two months.

[Kool_Aid]

Does the Scenalyzer AVI file look crappy, when played on your PC?

If it does, then encoding it is not going to help. Crap in = Crap out.

My AVI's Caps look as good or better than the source.

Is it possible a cable is bad, or there is some outside interference getting in there......like the cable laying across a power cord, etc.?

[Holden]

Does the Scenalyzer AVI file look crappy, when played on your PC?

If it does, then encoding it is not going to help. Crap in = Crap out.

My AVI's Caps look as good or better than the source.

Is it possible a cable is bad, or there is some outside interference getting in there......like the cable laying across a power cord, etc.?

The Scenalyzer AND Ulead captured AVIs look crappy from the get go. (On the PC).

I'm going to experiment with the dip switches on the DAC-100 now. If that fails it's time to attack the codec.

BTW: Although Ulead Studio 7 indicates it's using a Panasonc DV Codec, AVIcodec still reports that the resulting AVI file used a Sony DV Codec.

I uninstalled the k-lite codec pack and nothing has changed except I have fewer installed codecs now.

Also, the cables are basically strung through the air and nowhere near power cables.

[Holden]

DIP switches did nothing.

Time to fight the codecs.

[Holden]

Anyone have advice on removing codecs?

When I remove them from the device manager->video codec screen, they just come back.

I already have system restore disabled.

TIA.

Greg

[vhelp]

Hi Holden,

Please, don't kill yourself w/ this.

I take it, that when you said you had a previous image, you may not have
accounted for issues that you did not see in your first attempt to image
your setup way back they.

So, given the above, I think that you are only starting your troubles (based
on the above) all over again, and again.

Thats why I believe you need to start fresh but w/out codecs and things
as I've stated earlier.

Sorry, but you seem to consistantly have issue. I think that you really need
to start fresh, and then image from their, w/out the codec installed. Then
you can incrementally install codecs, one after the other as applications
require.

Deleting codecs "live" doesn't seem to cure your problems, cause it would
seem that you are retaining some minor (though enough) codec settings
and so forth. ie, seems the .reg files are keeping things in tact.

I don't know, but I think this might be the only alternative, else you'll be
going through this in circles

Well, that about it.
-vhelp

[Holden]

vhelp: My ghost image is of a fresh XP install patched as of July 2003. Office XP and Virus Scanning are the only other things installed, so it should remove any codecs I've installed.

However, I've been experimenting this morning and it looks like something I did this morning (k-lite codec uninstall, dip switch settings, etc...) or something unknown has changed. The DV I'm capturing now seems comparable to the straight to TV image.

I just captured the same two minute scene with DVIO, WinDV, Showbiz and Ulead. I'm going to encode them all with TMPG and then encode them all again with Showbiz. I'll author a DVD with all of these and hook up the camera to the TV to compare apples to apples in a final test.

I'm optomistic, barely!

[Holden]

Well, DVIO is off my list. It produced an invalid AVI file. The others went well. The TMPG encoded videos look OK, but the MyDVD authored DVD looks bad. It transcoded it and dropped the quality down.

Now I'm off to try some different authoring software.

[TheGr8Steve]

Don't forget to get rid of ShowBiz and you can forget about Windows Movie Maker unless you want to send Video E-mails

[Holden]

Actually, I've confirmed that I have the full versions of Showbiz and MyDVD, and the best DVD I've authored yet was using these products.

When I encoded to 720x480 @6000kbps with TMPG, the resulting MPEGs were jerky and the resulting DVD was just as bad.

When I encoded to DVD-spec in Showbiz and authored the resulting MPEGs with MyDVD, the DVD was the first to match the quality (I think, no head to head comparison yet) of direct tape to tv.

I think my problems have been resolved. Unfortunately, I can't say exactly what was fixed. The key may have been removing the k-lite codec pack during capture (although I had to reinstall it for an audio codec Showbiz needed for encoding). Or it could have been installing ScenAlyzer and whatever codec (Panasonic?) it installed.

Sorry for the murky ending, but I'm on my way to success and don't have time to nail down what the holdup was.

Much thanks to all of you who helped. I'm in debt to this forum and will try to return the favor when I can.

Later,

Greg