Some (not newbie) questions about video importing/converting/deinterlacing

[F_Krisztian]

Hi!
First of all, I was searching with google and I was reading forums for hours, and I figured out many things, but I'm not sure about some of them.

Please tell me if I'm doing right what I'm doing. I have a very very cheap Samsung VP-D371 MiniDV camcorder. I'm recording with it in 16:9 (widescreen) mode !!
I would like to import my videos on to my PC and achieve a video which to be:
- progressive
- 25 fps (not 50)
- no black borders
- best quality, converting speed doesn't matter
- correct aspect ratio, (i'm recording in widescreen), I want that if I record a ball in the reality, that to appear in my screen perfectly circle

For capturing the video I'm using a firewire cable and Ulead Video Studio 11 with the DV Encoder Type 1 codec.
It's strange that the imported video has a 4:3 size (and it's stretched), no matter how I set up the Ulead VideoStudio. And also there are some black borders. Is this ok? Or it's Ulead's fault?
Is Ulead making the video worse, or is this DV encoder codec bad? Wouldn't it have better quality if I import the video in uncompressed format?
This is how it looks after the import:


Notice the black borders and the stretched picture.

After this I'm editing it (with Ulead) but I'm saving it in the same size, same format, so nothing changes.
I'm using an Avisynth script to make the final video:

AVISource("uvs080911-002-12.avi")
ConvertToYV12(interlaced=true) // TempGauss needs YV12 format
Crop(10,6,0,-6) // to remove the black borders
TempGaussMC_alpha3() // deinterlace
Lanczos4Resize(1028,564,0,0,710,564) // to make it to the correct aspect ratio (16:9)
SelectEven() // I don't want 50 fps video, just 25
ConvertToRGB() // is this needed?

I've recorded a cube with my camera in widescreen mode, imported on to my PC, and with resizing it many times it seems that the 1028x564 size makes the cube to look on my PC perfectly cube. I'm stretching the video only horizontally, and I don't resize it vertically (to keep the quality).
The final video looks like this:


Is this whole thing okay? Am I doing something wrong which makes the video quality worse? Is this Ulead importing thing okay with the black borders and the stretched image?

Thanks a lot for the help.

[Soopafresh]

Crop after you deinterlace

[minidv2dvd]

hi and welcome to the forum!

first i'd start over with the capturing of the miniDV tape. use the free program winDV. capture as type 2 avi. it will work with more programs that way.

i'll assume you are shooting PAL? what you will end up with is a DVavi that is 720x576 at 25 fps. it is widescreen that has been encoded with non-square pixels into a 4:3 shape, so yes it looks weird, but there should not be any black borders. with most editors you should be able to import the file, right click on it and change the pixel properties to widescreen DVavi. then set your project output format to 16x9 and the output will be widescreen, for whatever format you choose to render as.

or if you want to do it manually the pixel aspect ratio for pal dvavi widescreen is 1.4568. so 1.4568x720=1048 so about 1048x576 would give the correct aspect ratio. i might use 1056 or 1040 just to make it divisible by 16.

[F_Krisztian]

Thanks a lot for the help. And thanks for the info.

Modified the script, so the crop will happen after the deinterlace. Thanks for the tip.

Yes, I'm shooting PAL. I tried the WinDV program and I like it very much, and I will use it from now on. However the result seems perfectly the same, and the same black borders appear. I think that it's simply the camera's "fault".
I haven't tried the pixel aspect ratio change, yet. But I will try it.

Thanks a lot, and any other tips are welcome.

[minidv2dvd]

if it always has the odd misaligned black borders the camera is probably defective. if it's returnable i would look into getting a new one.

[F_Krisztian]

I hoped that you are wrong. Unfortunately you are right. I searched about this problem on the net and I found that this is a very very common problem with the Samsun VP-D371 model. Unfortunately it seems that Samsung refuses to repair/replace it because they say that it's "functional".
Here are some more info about it: http://samsung-vp-d371w.blogspot.com/
Anyway, I don't have the money to buy another camcorder, and because Samsung refuses to repair it, I need to live with it