What codec to use (with Studio DV v110)

[Rene]

Could someone share his/her wisdom on what
is the best codec to use when making a SDV project into an AVI.

In the "make" menu, i've a choice between:
1. DV Video encoder,
2. Cinepack
3. at least 4 different ones from Microsoft
4. Indeo
5. Miro DV300

The avi is used for encoding (via Premiere 6 with LSX
plug-in) or via TMPGenc 12h to SVCD (Pal).
Sharpness and motion artefacts are my key criteria.

Many Thanks,
Rene

[Horrorking]

OK, I cant help you directly, but I spent a few hours today trying a few tests with my capture card to get the best quality for me. All captures were done at 352*288*25 from a video source on a Celeron 500 with 256M ram. Each capture was the same 2 minute test piece from a commercially produced tape. The meg/min is from the 2 minute recording, devided in half.

Compression was set at highest quality (Largest file) for each codek with that option, and quick compress for the Indeo codec's. If keyframe is supported, it was set to 15 frames.

Cinepak, Heaps of dropped frames, but 12.5Meg/min file size. Quality was very poor with noticable artifacts.

Indeo 3.2. Some dropped frames, some degredation, especially on high motion scenes.

Indeo 5.11. This used to be my setting in the past. 35-170MB/min file sizes, from this test & historical recording - I find a 45 minute video can be anywhere from 900M to 1.7GB depending on the content. Reasonable quality, but tended to be slightly blurry when viewed full screen on the PC, but fine on my TV.

MSVideo 1 - Really crappy quality.

MPEG 4 - Wow, I was suprised. only 28meg/min file size, but there were noticably fewer compression artifacts that Indeo 5.11, and the full screen playback was clear, not blocky at all, even in high motion scenes, but the overall quality looked a little soft - maybe it is slightly blurred to reduce the artifacts???

Brooktree Pro Summer - 38meg/min. Yeah, right - looked like those .jpg's that someone has overcompressed WAYYYYYYY too much. One scene had about 5 secs of a black bar on a light background in the back of the shot, and you could not pick the edges they were that blurry!

Brooktree Raw - 180Meg/Min is a high data rate, but my PC handled it without any problems. The quality is excellent, as you would expect

Indeo Raw 1.2 - 130meg/min, so it's smaller than the above Brooktree, and just as clear.

Indeo 4.5 - 55meg/min. Looked goot at full screen, but there were noticable compression blocks on gradual color changes in the background, which made viewing less than acceptable

Full uncompressed - Of course this is the ultimate, but at 345meg/min, yoiu are going to need a LOT of space.

I hope this helps someone out there

[bigbeard]

You really should use the DV-codec when creating an AVI in StudioDV since it is lossless if your input was from a MiniDV or D8-camcorder.

[Rene]

@horrorking and Bigbeard,

Thanks a lot for your feedback!
Great stuff.
Best Regards,
Rene