DV Resolution and Editing

[BF109]

Hi All

I come here with basic knowledge of Digital Video. My question is, what does RAW DV from a camcoder look like? Can someone tell me where I can see a sample of RAW DV footage (or upload a sample).

Thanks
Shelton.

[thecoalman]

https://forum.videohelp.com/topic257651.html

Link at the bottom for DV-AVI file, note that there is no sound track.

DV-AVI is 720x480(576) with set data rate, somewhere around 30Mbps. 1 hour will consume about 13.5 GB's of space. It's a direct bit for bit copy of whats on the tape. It's very editor friendly and the entire length of video can be processed numerous times without too much adverse affects on the quality. Any decnet editor is only going to process the necessary frames such as where you have added transitions.

One thing to note is that footage is from a Canon GL2, you can't expect to see results like that from a consumer cam especially considering the lighting.

[BF109]

thanks for the infor. What I am wondering is whether I should upgrade my computer and invest extra $$ so that I can get a motherboard with firewire. Then I can get the DV footage onto the PC for editing and then make it into a DVD or HD - now I dont want to invest this money if the end result is about the same as what I got by directly putting my footage from my digital camcorder to the DVD disc via a DVD recorder (Philips dvd burner in the lounge) _do you think I will get better results in quality if I do the steps myself - which is copy DV to PC, edit, encode to MPEG2 then burn DVD. I know this is a time consuming process but I am willing to spend the time If I know the end result will be better than what I have now - which is a generic MPEG2 coded DV footage from my DVD recorder.

Thanks
Shelton.

[thecoalman]

You only need to purchase a PCI firewire card, about $15 US.

Whether or not the results will be better or worse really depends on the recorder compared to the software encoder. There's other factors as well. Overall you get much more control over what you can do with it on PC. For editing purposes DV over firewire is superior.

On the other hand if you're just making minor edits such as cutting and adding transitions between them capturing with a recorder is faster providing you use software desgined to edit MPEG. MPEG edtiors will only reencode portions of the video it has to so the final quality of most of the video is completey dependant on the recorder.

So... it "depends"...

[BF109]

OK thanks - do you have raw DV footage from a digital camcorder in outdoors scences so that I can see what it looks like - Raw DV ?

[edDV]

The DV format itself is capable of very high SD quality*. Camcorders range from ~$250 to $20,000 and picture quality pretty much tracks price. All use similar DV codecs and record to the same 25Mb/s video + PCM audio.

This represents a top end SD DVCPro model. The lens alone is worth >$5k http://catalog2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ModelDetail?displayTab=O&store...odel=AJ-SPX800

A DVD recorder can take the DV stream in real time but encoding quality depends on a one pass real time hardware MPeg2 encoder. Software encoders allow multipass analysis and can vary processing times to get a better result since they are not bound by real time requirements.

The end quality difference depends to a large degree on the quality of the DV source. Consumer level MiniDV camcorders lack full resolution detail from their optics and sensors.


* There are some compromises made to achieve a low 25Mb/s bitrate vs. 90Mb/s Digital Betacam. One is 4:1:1 vs 4:2:2 color processing. Second DV compresses 5x vs. 3x for DigiBeta. There is a 4:2:2 variant of DV called DVCPro50 for 50Mb/s which produces quality near to DigiBeta.