Movie Maker 2 capture

[dobbin_uk]

I have previously used Windows Movie Maker to capture footage from my DV camcorder. The captured footage is stored as an AVI file but I'm not sure if this is type 1 or 2. Can anyone confirm if this capture is lossless and if I'd gain any benefit by using another method to capture footage?

Thanks in advance. Regards,
Lee.

[jimmalenko]

DV-AVI is not lossless - I seem to recall a thread a few weeks ago that showed that DV was 25Mbps, and has a 5:1 compression ratio or thereabouts. However, for all intents and purposes, IMO DV-AVI will certainly be high enough quality for most applications/projects. If you wanted to go truly lossless, you need to use huffyuv or picvideo MJPEG AFAIK.

[jimmalenko]

According to here, WMM is Type 1

[dobbin_uk]

Thanks Jim.

Regards,
Lee.

[jimmalenko]

Thanks Jim.

Regards,
Lee.

No problem. IIRC, there's a DV Type 1 to Type 2 converter in the tools section here if you require it

[dobbin_uk]

Ok. I have downloaded Huffy. Ummm how do I use it? Can't find anything specific to this subject. Any help much appreciated.

Regards,
Lee.

[dobbin_uk]

I'm getting there. Please correct if I'm wrong: In order to use Huffy, I need to select it as the codec to use, within the software that I'm using to perform the capture. I'm in the process of trying to work out how to do this in Windows Movie Maker.

Regards,
Lee.

[guns1inger]

Before getting carried away, transferring DV from the camera to the PC is essentially lossless because you are not recompressing the data. What you trasnfer to the PC is exactly what you had on the tape. The compression has already occurred in the camera, and cannot be undone. Huffy maybe an alternative after editing, however most DV codecs can go at least 2 generations before compression has a visible effect.

Don't make life harder for yourself than it needs to be.

[dobbin_uk]

Thanks for the response. I'm new to all this video stuff (and no I didn't get the camcorder for Xmas Capmaster ). I've just captured some DV footage and played it back in its raw AVI (well, you know what I mean) format and then compared that same footage after it's been through Windows Movie Maker. Ouch what a difference! What a shame I have put all my captured footage through Movie Maker and recorded over the source. Even though I edited it into, what I thought was, one of the better formats (High Quality PAL, variable bit rate, 720x576) the degradation in quality is astounding.
Looks like I'll be burning all my captured AVI source files to DVD and keeping them from now on.

Regards,
Lee.

[guns1inger]

The use of a good encoder would prevent this. WMM, while cheap and cheerful, is not a good encoder. Have a look at the demo versions (if available) of the following

tmpgenc - cheap, good quality, a little slow
CCE basic - cheap, high quality, very fast
Mainconcept - more expensive, very fast, a little soft sometimes
Procoder / Procoder Express - moderate speed, good quality

There are others, including qenc, which is free, that can also be considered. All of these produce better output than WMM. With a good encoder, you should be able to get 60 minutes of footage that is almost indistinguishable from the original DV on a single layer disk.

[edDV]

Thanks for the response. I'm new to all this video stuff (and no I didn't get the camcorder for Xmas Capmaster ). I've just captured some DV footage and played it back in its raw AVI (well, you know what I mean) format and then compared that same footage after it's been through Windows Movie Maker. Ouch what a difference! What a shame I have put all my captured footage through Movie Maker and recorded over the source. Even though I edited it into, what I thought was, one of the better formats (High Quality PAL, variable bit rate, 720x576) the degradation in quality is astounding.
Looks like I'll be burning all my captured AVI source files to DVD and keeping them from now on.

Regards,
Lee.

Some misconceptions here.

First, guns1inger was right on target. The camcorder converts the CCD images directly to DV format in the hardware so anything coming out of that camcoder is compressed 5:1 to the 25Mb/s DV stream. So capturing with huffyuv won't improve compression. That said DV is a very high quality format and is used every day by broadcasters for news coverage.

Second, you said you captured (actually transferred) to DV-AVI, and edited in DV format, it appears you outputted in WMV a highly compressed format. That explains any loss you might see. If you use "send to DV camera" you will record your project back to DV tape with no loss in quality (except in transition and effects portions of the movie).

You can also "save to my computer" and specify DV-AVI as the file standard under "show other choices" then select DV-AVI. If you do that you will have no loss. Microsoft seems bent to suck your project into WMV.

The DV-AVI file can be imported into almost any DVD authoring program.

PS: If you use the default Movie Maker 2 "Best quality for playback on my computer" you will get a 336 Kb/s (75x compression from 25Mb/s DV stream) at 320x240 size 30fps. Why they do this much compression as the default I can't imagine.

[edDV]

The use of a good encoder would prevent this. WMM, while cheap and cheerful, is not a good encoder. Have a look at the demo versions (if available) of the following

tmpgenc - cheap, good quality, a little slow
CCE basic - cheap, high quality, very fast
Mainconcept - more expensive, very fast, a little soft sometimes
Procoder / Procoder Express - moderate speed, good quality

There are others, including qenc, which is free, that can also be considered. All of these produce better output than WMM. With a good encoder, you should be able to get 60 minutes of footage that is almost indistinguishable from the original DV on a single layer disk.

WMM 2 can still be used as the front end to all of these encoders if the project is saved in DV-AVI format as shown above.

Used in this way, WMM2 can be used with no loss.

WMV has its place for highly compressed streams and can have very high quality if used correctly for the application. WMV is not the correct path to a MPeg2 Video DVD. Output the project in DV-AVI format instead.