Editing DV footage with Pinnacle - Will "uncompressed" maintain q

[spup345]

I am using Pinnacle Studio Ultimate 12 to edit my DV footage (AVI). But I don't want to use Pinnacle to encode it since I know there are much better encoders out there.

So after using Pinnacle to edit movie content, do I just output it to an avi file using "Uncompressed Frames" as the compression method and then use a much better 3rd party mpg encoder to create the mpg file with top quality and then a 3rd party dvd authoring program to create the VIDEO_TS folder (and then burn it)?

Or should I be selecting some other setting? (The "Compression" drop-down lists DV, MJPEG, a few other codecs, and Uncompressed Frames).

[edDV]

Normally you should output back to DV format (DV-AVI). Use an encoder that accepts DV format.

Uncompressed AVI will increase the file size 5x and convert the chroma.

[spup345]

So select "DV" from the Compression drop-down box and then take the outputted (& edited) AVI file to my favorite MPG encoder?

[edDV]

So select "DV" from the Compression drop-down box and then take the outputted (& edited) AVI file to my favorite MPG encoder?

Yes

[spup345]

Thanks. Thread done.

[lordsmurf]

Only choose DV if it stream copies. Otherwise you're losing quality from Dv compression. Go with uncompressed for non stream copy. DV is lossy.

[spup345]

What do you mean stream copies vs. non-stream copies?

[poisondeathray]

What he means is if your editor does "smart rendering" ; i.e. it allows pass through of cuts only editing, or "stream copies" untouched segments

Some editors will decompress to RGB internally anyway , so the chroma will be resampled (interpolated) anyway. If this is the case with your editor, then DV is lossy and your quality will be worse.

However, as soon as you add effects, or color correction, it undergoes an YUY2=>RGB conversion anyway.

To summarize, exporting DV-AVI is only better in the case that your editor does "smart rendering" and allows pass through , and you never did any effects like color correction that affect the entire segment. Otherwise, uncompressed is almost always better (at least in terms of quality)

[edDV]

Premiere and Vegas pass DV and in some cases MPeg2 losslessly (for unprocessed frames) but Pinnacle Studio may convert everything to RGB so, if true, I agree with poisondeathray.

Note that uncompressed will be large (~65-80GB/hr.) and unplayable without a RAID. You would just feed it to your encoder. DV (13GB/hr) would be more practcal for archive in most cases.