How to improve DV?

[[AC]]

Hi,

I have a Digital 8 camcorder (Sony TRV 140 E) and I can't make the final movies with a perfect quality, like a professional DVD or a good VHS.
My PC is a Pentium IV 2.8(HT) with 3 HDs SATA and 1GBs RAM, to make movies. I think this is enought, but I can't make movies in MPEG2(DVD) with a perfect quality.
How can I do to improve the final video?

Thank's

AC

[thecoalman]

It will only be as good as whatyou put in. You can expect the DVD to look similar if not identical to the quality if you played the video directly from the cam to TV.

If you want higher quality you need a better cam.

[jtoolman2000]

I've never had an MPG2 file from DV look as good as the raw DV video.

[thecoalman]

Then I'd suggest going back and looking at what you're doing. DV from a regular cam should easily be able to be converted with minimal quality loss. Even from a high quality source it should still look quite close, the oly significant degradation you'll see in the folliwing screeshots is along the edges of then lights:

DV-AVI:


8000CBR MPEG2

[vhelp]

You didn't specify how you are viewing your final MPEG's..
** ie, tv or software dvd player.

IMHO and at the present time, you can not improve consumer home made
(hand-held) DV footage as good as Proffesionally produced Commercial DVD's.

But, you can probably do better than what you are now, assuming that
your methods were not appropriate for your dv projects.

(hand-held footaging is much more probablematic for MPEG to process because
of the constant shaking, and lack of tripod)

Some suggestions:

** resolution, keep at 720 x 480
** encode as Interlace (don't de-interlace and encode)
** bitrate, use CBR and highest bitrate your dvd player(s) will allow [ie, 9000]
** be sure you set 29.970 fps
** if using TMPGenc, use 'Motion search precsion: [Highest quality (very slow) ]
** be sure to set Field order: [Bottom field first (field B) ]
** last, run futher experiments with various encoding setups till you're satisfied

(it's been my experience that setting encoding mode to VBR is not enough
or not effective enough for most mpeg encoders. I have struggled with this
for many years, (using mainly TMPGenc) and I have concluded that CBR and
highest bitrate [in my case, is 9000] yields better results in most cases
over VBR encoding processes)

Also, case you are using software (sw) dvd/mpeg players..

Based on my experience, DirectX v9.x will (or should) give you true tv-like
smooth and fluid play, as if you were watching it on a *real* tv set.
But, if you are not getting that on your sw player.. ie, you see combing lines
or noticable interlace during play, then your directX/DS is not setup
effecially/properly.

For instance..

If you are viewing your final MPEG's through PowerDVD, (pdvd) and you notice such
issues I just mentioned, and you set pdvd to 'force bob' and it looks blurry,
then you have an improper directX/DS install. It should look just (for pure
Interlace content) like true tv with no sign of combing or line or blurryness
or anything. Just clean tv viewing inside sw player

:P - ~!~ - (HaPpY ~!~ HoLiDaYs) - ~!~ -

-vhelp 3710

[guns1inger]

You will never get comsumer DV to look as good as film sourced DVDs. The soure material just isn't good enough. That said, I have many commercial disks where consumer or pro-sumer DV has been used to film some of the extras, and I know I can produce better look material with my home kit.

If you are putting less than 1 hour of DV footage on a DVD, then you should be able to match the quality at the very least, and with careful use of the right filters, improve the way it looks through colour correction and adjustment.

[[AC]]

Here go some examples of DVD(Mpeg2) made from my Digital8 camcorder Sony TRV 140, convert with some known software (the number is the "Bitrate"). As you can see the video quality it's very poor. This exemples is the worse, there are another parts of the video that are better then this and some parts nearly perfect with natural light.
DVD_3000TMPGEnc

DVD_5000TMPGEnc

Mpeg1_2200TMPGEnc


One more thing, the source AVI has the same quality of DVD 5000 and I'm using 720x576 PAL for DVD encode and 352x288 PAL for Mpeg1.
In TV the quality seems better, but in the PC monitor looks like this images.

[thecoalman]

I'll assume by the filename that the bitrate is 3000? That's too low, especially if you're using full frame resolution.

Edit: You've since changed the image....

Edit2: Ok, it's back. Anyway that image doesn't tell us anything because we don't know what the original looks like, addiutionally it's been resized .....

A quick suggestion. Transfer your footage as DV-AVI to your HDD. Convert using 720x480 (or the pal equivalent if in pal land) 6000 VBR, make sure you don't deinterlace the footage at any point and it's set for bottom field.

Author to disc and it should be nearly identical in quality to what it looks like played from cam to TV.

[takeshi]

Your final video isn't going to magically look better than the source video if that's what you're expecting. To accurately judge video quality of a video intended to be viewed on a TV you need to judge the image on a TV screen. A PC monitor isn't going to but it as the PC monitor is progressive and the gamma is quite different.

If your intent is to view the video on a PC then judge the final product on a PC monitor.

[sitlet]

one reason that looks so bad is due to lack of light. most camcorders need a lot of light to look any good, so indoor shots will look grainy like that

[thecoalman]

Ahhhh.... he changed them again.....

You cam is trying to compensate for the low light as mentioned above. If it has manual settings you may want to try adjusting them appropiately. A low end cam like your is going to have minimal if any manual settings. Here's a screeshot from my prosumer GL2 on auto:



Simialr shot with a preset made for low light conditions:

[guns1inger]

All of them are too compressed for the amount of noise. Either reduce the noise by filtering (and risk muddying the image), or settle for at least 7500kbps and less running time on the disk.

Although this horse has bolted, you should investigate camera mounted lights for indoor/low light shooting.

[bobcat56458]

Hi [AC] Here is a post that I recently posted on the dvinfo.net forum. You might find the information valuable in your situation also, as well as the advice given by the other posters.

I have 2 consumer level DV camcorders, and experience the grainy results too when watching my DV footage after authoring a DVD, and watching it on a TV, especially footage that was shot indoors. I have through much research learned how to filter out that problem with the use of denoisers. Doing this is very time consuming, about 11 minutes for every minute of video, but provides a much-improved result. The method I use is to first edit my video on the timeline in Ulead VideoStudio, and then frameserve it to TMPGEnc Plus using the Debugmode frameserver. The file I’m loading into TMPGEnc is not the AVI file Debugmode outputs, but an AVS script that I have made that does the filtering (denoising) using the free program Avisynth. This, as it sounds, is a complex method with a strong learning curve, but after you master it will give you the results you want. Below is the Avisynth script I use for this purpose. A good resource for learning about using Avisynth is the Doom9’s forum. There are also other tools (programs) that have denoiser filters that you might want to try like Virtualdub (also free) that does not require frameserving.

LoadPlugin("E:\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5\plugins\ReInterpolate411.dll")
LoadPlugin("E:\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5\plugins\UnDot.dll")
LoadPlugin("E:\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5\plugins\Convolution3D.dll")
LoadPlugin("E:\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5\plugins\LeakKernelDeint.dll")
AVISource("H:\Video Tests 2\Julie project\debugmode.avi")
ReInterpolate411()
LeakKernelBob(order=0, threshold=7)
UnDot()
Convolution3D(0, 12, 20, 12, 16, 6, 0)
assumebff()
SeparateFields().selectevery(4,0,3).Weave()
converttorgb24()

Edit: Noticed your in a PAL country, so you would need to use "ReInterpolate420.dll" in your Avisynth script. Also note that most of these plugins do not come with the Avisynth download, and must be downloaded and added to your Avisynth plugin folder.