Question about codecs

[berru]

Hi,
Is there a way to know which codec a certain program is using for a certain task?

In my case, I'm trying to edit home videos shot with my DV camcorder. I edit the videos with Premiere 6.0, and then encode them with TMPGENC into mpeg2.

When editing DV, Premiere only allows me to use Microsoft DV codec, which I've read is not good. But I've read somewhere that the codec is only used during transitions or when filters are applied. Is this true?

As I understand it, when Premiere creates any effect on the input video, it provides the compressed original AVI file to the codec, which returns the uncompressed frames to Premiere. Then Premiere generates the effect to the uncompressed frames. At exporting time, Premiere gives the timeline back to the codec which generates the compressed AVI file (DV in my case). Is this the correct behavior? I guess this is happening, because if I input the original raw AVI DV file with TMPGENC, it won't accept it. But if I edit it with Premiere, then it accepts it. So the format must have changed. Also, checking the video properties of the files with VirtualDub, I can see that the original video has YUV2 color format, while the one edited with Premiere has RGB color format.

So my question is, if I export the timeline (frameserving to TMPGENC) does the whole timeline go through the MS codec or only the parts where there are effects or transitions? If my timeline consisted only of raw clips one after the other, without any effect or transition or title added, would Premiere uncompress and recompress the whole video? If that is the case, wouldn't that reduce the quality of the video?

My second question is whether there's a way to force Premiere to use a different DV codec than Microsoft's. Is my only shot to upgrade to Premiere 6.5 or 7 and use MainConcept's codec?

Finally, when I frameserve the movie to TMPGENC, how do I know which codec is TMPGENC using to uncompress the DV file? Can I force TMPGENC to use one specific codec? Or what about VirtualDub?

I don't even know what DV codecs I have in my computer, but I'd like to know, and I'd like to use only the best ones. I wanted to install Panasonics DV codec, but after installing, how will I know if any application will use it? Is there a way to know which ones are there installed, and which ones are used by each application?

Thanks!

[rcb]

Wont answer all your questions/proplems, but here are two utilities that can give you codec info...

AviCodec and Gspot

[BJ_M]

premeiere - out of the box will only use the MS codec and will re-encode everything to that codec , this has changed with the later versions of premiere ..
I would suggest upgrading to 6.5 or pro - which handle Dv much better ..

BUT

you can use the main concept dv codec (and perhaps others) in premeire 6 through a little simple workaround basicly tricking windows ..

DV is also only YUV ..


see here on how to use a different DV codec in premeire http://www.abcdv.com/article/articleview/10/1/79/