Conversion of DV-AVI files captured on Mini DV camera

[NE1WeKnow]

Hi

I come to you in frustration after spending many hours editing home video footage only to find the resulting video quality is worse than the source.

I'll try to be brief with the background...

I have an enormous pile of home video footage captured on a Mini DV camera which has been imported as raw DV-AVI files (PAL 720x576 at 25fps). Going in, I was aware that the source footage was not the best - there is some noise in the picture, which increases when there was only artificial light available - but I really wasn't expecting the quality to end up worse.

To put it all together, I purchased some video editing software called AVS Video Editor by AVS4You - I chose this software because it was simple to use, met my needs (basic editing and transitions) and wasn't too costly.

The source file info is below:

Format : AVI
Format/Info : Audio Video Interleave
Format_Commercial_IfAny : DVCPRO
FileSize/String : 29.9 MiB
Duration/String : 8s 360ms
OverallBitRate_Mode/String : Constant
OverallBitRate/String : 30.0 Mbps
Recorded_Date : 2007-08-08 09:38:57.000
TAPE : sclive

ID/String : 0
Format : DV
Format_Commercial_IfAny : DVCPRO
CodecID : dvsd
CodecID/Hint : Sony
Duration/String : 8s 360ms
BitRate_Mode/String : Constant
BitRate/String : 24.4 Mbps
BitRate_Encoded/String : 28.8 Mbps
Width/String : 720 pixels
Height/String : 576 pixels
DisplayAspectRatio/String : 4:3
DisplayAspectRatio_Original/String : 4:3
FrameRate_Mode/String : Constant
FrameRate/String : 25.000 fps
Standard : PAL
ColorSpace : YUV
ChromaSubsampling : 4:2:0
BitDepth/String : 8 bits
ScanType/String : Interlaced
ScanOrder/String : Bottom Field First
Compression_Mode/String : Lossy
Bits-(Pixel*Frame) : 2.357
TimeCode_FirstFrame : 00:30:08:01
TimeCode_Source : Subcode time code
StreamSize/String : 28.7 MiB (96%)

ID/String : 1
Format : PCM
Format_Settings_Endianness : Little
Format_Settings_Sign : Signed
CodecID : 1
Duration/String : 8s 360ms
BitRate_Mode/String : Constant
BitRate/String : 1 024 Kbps
Channel(s)/String : 2 channels
SamplingRate/String : 32.0 KHz
BitDepth/String : 16 bits
StreamSize/String : 1.02 MiB (3%)
Alignment/String : Aligned on interleaves
Interleave_Duration/String : 492 ms (12.29 video frames)


Some of the source files have ended up with 2 audio streams muxed into the video stream for some reason, and I originally thought this might have been causing problems, but after producing a straight copy of the video and audio stream into a new file using FFmpeg, I again tested conversion and the quality looks about the same.

I've tried H264/AVC as the target format at various bitrates, including 28800kbps (the same as the source which was suggested by an AVS4You rep on their support forum), but the resulting video is still a lot more noisy to my eye and also a bit darker than the source.

I've attached a screenshot which shows all of the options presented by the software when converting to H264/AVC. Is there anything I can use amongst these options to "tweak" the conversion algorithm to remove noise?

I've also uploaded a sample file which probably does a better job of demonstrating the noise in the source video.

http://www.filedropper.com/source_3

Any advice at this point would be most helpful.

Thanks
Matt

[manono]

The thing that springs to mind first is that you chose the worst possible way to encode it - Single Pass Bitrate. Try Single Pass Quantizer with maybe 18 as the quantizer. That will distribute the bits so that you get more even quality throughout.

Secondly, in my opinion, whatever you paid for this program was that much too much as there are freeware programs at least as good. Was that too harsh? Maybe. Maybe you like cheesy effects.

I didn't look at the sample but if there's noise you might try a denoiser. Does your program offer one or several?

[smrpix]

There's a tiny bit of gain noise in your shadows -- nowhere near as troubling in the grand scheme of things as your unrecoverable blown out highlights. In other words, it's a perfectly fine DV home video. Don't do anything to it. "Fixing" it will only degrade the image, take a lot of time, and make no difference to your audience.

Any decent editor will allow you to output DV sources as DV with no changes to the source, absolutely 1:1 throughput -- what comes out is exactly what goes in. If you start playing with filters you start degrading the quality.

Do not do any conversions until you have your edited DV "Master." Then convert to whatever delivery format you need. H.264 at around 4-5mbs should be more than sufficient for most SD sources.

[jagabo]

Your source is interlaced of course. So you need to encode interlaced, or deinterlace and encode progressive. Attached are some examples. nofilt.mkv is unfiltered, encoded interlaced at CRF 18 with x264 CLI. It should look pretty close to your source. qtgmc.mkv is smart bob deinterlaced with qtgmc(), the levels were brought down a little to make them legal, and encoded progressive at CRF 15 with x264 CLI. You should be able to see a little more detail in the brights.

[NE1WeKnow]

The thing that springs to mind first is that you chose the worst possible way to encode it - Single Pass Bitrate. Try Single Pass Quantizer with maybe 18 as the quantizer. That will distribute the bits so that you get more even quality throughout.

Secondly, in my opinion, whatever you paid for this program was that much too much as there are freeware programs at least as good. Was that too harsh? Maybe. Maybe you like cheesy effects.

I didn't look at the sample but if there's noise you might try a denoiser. Does your program offer one or several?

It's got "Noise Reduction" under H264 settings as per the screenshot, but with no reference material to know what is a typical value for this and what is the available range, I wouldn't know where to start.

Knowing what you know, it probably sounds dumb to have paid for this program, but I did have certain requirements and tried a few free ones only to see that it would be slow going if I stayed with them.

[NE1WeKnow]

There's a tiny bit of gain noise in your shadows -- nowhere near as troubling in the grand scheme of things as your unrecoverable blown out highlights. In other words, it's a perfectly fine DV home video. Don't do anything to it. "Fixing" it will only degrade the image, take a lot of time, and make no difference to your audience.

Any decent editor will allow you to output DV sources as DV with no changes to the source, absolutely 1:1 throughput -- what comes out is exactly what goes in. If you start playing with filters you start degrading the quality.

Do not do any conversions until you have your edited DV "Master." Then convert to whatever delivery format you need. H.264 at around 4-5mbs should be more than sufficient for most SD sources.

Makes sense. I hadn't actually thought to produce an edited "master" without any conversion. Unfortunately, the AVI file output only offers uncompressed video or a range of compression formats not including DV. I tested uncompressed output on my sample clip and the software still messes with the video and it looks much worse.

[NE1WeKnow]

Your source is interlaced of course. So you need to encode interlaced, or deinterlace and encode progressive. Attached are some examples. nofilt.mkv is unfiltered, encoded interlaced at CRF 18 with x264 CLI. It should look pretty close to your source. qtgmc.mkv is smart bob deinterlaced with qtgmc(), the levels were brought down a little to make them legal, and encoded progressive at CRF 15 with x264 CLI. You should be able to see a little more detail in the brights.

Your nofilt.mkv example looks great! This gives me hope. I just need to understand how you achieved this.

In an effort to try to understand the fundamentals of what you have said, I opened up MediaCoder and chose x264 conversion with CQP = 18 but the output was not as good as your example. I also tried ticking the CRF option as per the attached screen. What did I do wrong?

It's looking likely that I'm stuck using the output options made available through the software given that I can't output my project in a suitable format for external conversion. Do any of the options in the previous screenshot look familiar?

[jagabo]

For simple cut and paste editing of DV AVI use VirtualDub in Video -> Direct Stream Copy mode. With DV AVI it will give you frame accurate cuts without any reencoding (no loss of quality).

I don't really know MediaCoder but it probably didn't handle the interlacing properly. Handbrake doesn't handle it either, but you can force it to encode interlaced by entering "bff" in the x264 extra options box. Don't use any of the filtering or cropping options -- it will mess up the interlacing.

[smrpix]

Unfortunately, the AVI file output only offers uncompressed video or a range of compression formats not including DV. I tested uncompressed output on my sample clip and the software still messes with the video and it looks much worse.

Double-check with a short sample. Their website says it reads and writes avi with a DV codec, which most software handles as a straight passthrough.

[jagabo]

Unfortunately, the AVI file output only offers uncompressed video or a range of compression formats not including DV.

That probably means it's going to recompress (and lose a little quality, though you probably won't notice) the video even if you install a DV codec like Cedocida. Unless there's a setting somewhere else that prevents reencoding.

[NE1WeKnow]

Thanks for the additional information folks. I have found that installing the DV codecs introduces an additional format for output in the advanced options, so I will play around with this. I will also look at the "bff" option for x264 encoding.