Best DV Codec Drivers for DV Type Video

[mlong30]

Hi All,

I'm trying to clean my first DV Type1 & Type 2 AVI video for the first time using Avisynth/VirtualDubMod. I now realize that I need DV Codec drivers installed on my system.

Can anyone suggest the best free drivers that don't loose quality? I also want to know what are the best drivers available for me to purchase. I just did a search and I noticed that MainConcept sells their own DV Codec drivers. I have Sony Vegas 7 with Manconcept built in, but not sure if the DV Codec drivers came with my Vegas+DVD 7 package.

Also is it good to have more than one DV Codec installed, and can you tell Avisynth/VirutalDubMod which one to use?

Thanks.

Matt

[JohnnyMalaria]

Can you define "clean"? Do you mean trimming clips or doing more fanciful stuff like adjusting brightness, color etc?

Re available codecs:

Codecs come in two flavors - those written for the very old Video for Windows (VfW) technology and those written for DirectShow, which is Microsoft's current video-related multimedia technology and far more powerful.

With VfW, only one codec for a given format of video can exist that can be "discovered" by VfW-based programs. i.e., when a VfW-based program starts up, one of the first tasks is usually to ask the OS for a list of VfW codecs that are installed. Each video format in the VfW world is identified by a "four character code" or FourCC. For standard DV, it is 'dvsd'. Even though you may have more than one 'dvsd' format VfW codec on the computer, only one of them is "active". It gets more complicated becaue VfW requires that both the encoder and decoder functions be part of the same driver. This creates problems if you want to use one provider's encoder and another provider's decoder. (Our Enhanced DV Decoder gets around this problem by "wrapping" itself around an existing VfW DV codec).

There are freeware VfW-type DV codecs available - such as Panasonic's.

For DirectShow, there is less restriction and you can have multiple DV codecs installed and they can be available at the same time. It's up to the program using them to determine whether to look for all of them or use the default recommendation of the OS.

Windows ships with a DirectShow DV codec. It's not the best by any means and there are a number of third-party alternatives. Sometimes, the third-party ones are tied to a given application (e.g., Mainconcept + Adobe).

(If you are wanting to do color correction (specifically adjust brightness, contrast, phase/hue), you can use our Enosoft DV Processor. For these kinds of adjustments, it is by far the fastest method. It avoids ever having to decode the video to the extent that traditional decoders do and for some functions (notably brightess), has absolutely zero impact on the quality of the converted DV footage.)

[mlong30]

Can you define "clean"? Do you mean trimming clips or doing more fanciful stuff like adjusting brightness, color etc?
brightess), has absolutely zero impact on the quality of the converted DV footage.)

Since I'm coping from VHS tapes using DV, I wanted to use the noise cleaners and other filters from Avisynth to clean my VHS tapes.

Matt