MiniDV, best capture format?

[Malcom]

mrbass --

I thought VCD was progressive/non-interlaced only?

If so, how does Field Order have any affect? Don't you have to de-interlace in order to put your miniDV footage on VCD?

Oh, and btw, Field order A is typically bottom field first, Field order B is top field first. Very silly, I know, but that's the facts :)

[rmwang]

I'm having a similiar problem as Terry. Once I've captured my AVI images and then convert them to MPEG2, any images involving movement show obvious "pixalation". Will getting a better encoder than TMPGENC such as the VEGASVIDEO mentioned previously make that much of a difference? Any experience comparing these two?

[Malcom]

My AVI -> MPEG2 conversions retain nearly 100% of the original DV quality.

That's w/ CCE although VegasVideo3 supposedly does nearly as well.

[holistic]

oops ! ...

[holistic]

3) miniDV is already lossy-compressed at 35Mb/sec.

A typo i hope ... Was under the impression it was 3.5 to 3.7 Mb/sec
As for the rest . Very informative.

THIS BEGS THE QUESTION .... ... .

When A HOME DVD-R is MADE (from a Dv source of 4:1:1 ) it is not to DVD spec's .This is because DVD Profile/Levels accept only 4:2:2 and 4:2:0 as a standard.

Just a thought



Some reading for those that want to know .........
http://www.digitaltelevision.com/dtvbook/ch2.shtml

[Malcom]

holistic,

I'm talking bits per second, just as 9.8mb/s for DVD is referring to bits, not bytes. You are obviously talking bytes. miniDV has a much higher bitrate than DVD. However, you are correct, there was indeed a typo = it is 25 mbit/sec, NOT 35. This is where your 3.13MB/sec comes from (25/8).

A properly homemade is DVD(R) is 100% to DVD specification. Anyone who tells you otherwise is smoking crack.

In the case of miniDV's 4:1:1 fidelity, it is CONVERTED to meet DVD specifications at the time of MPEG2 encoding. Everything is converted to DVD spec or it does not go on the disc.

[holistic]

Greetings Malcom

In the case of miniDV's 4:1:1 fidelity, it is CONVERTED to meet DVD specifications at the time of MPEG2 encoding. Everything is converted to DVD spec or it does not go on the disc.

How . Averaged ? - luminance upsampled ?

thanks

[Malcom]

Depends.

Most of the time, believe it or not, it is YUV 4:1:1 -> RGB24 -> YUV 4:2:*

In essense, it is converted just as a lower or higher resolution video is converted to a DVD-spec resolution. Through sampling...

Of course it doesn't gain any quality... but it ensures compliance. I just checked one of my burn-ready m2v's (created from miniDV footage) and it is 4:2:0.

[vhelp]

Terry, and others,
.
.
for your DV to MPEG-2 motivation...

below is a link to a sample clip on my webhost.
It's very action packed w/ lots of fast motion and what-not.
Even when this clip is played in slow-motion on your DVD player,
you can't really see any blocks. So, if this doesn't satisfy you,
then I don't know what will. And, of course I don't recommend
viewing on PC monitor. It's for TV viewing, as it was ment for!

This clip was recorded off my Satalite to a miniDV tape via my
Canon ZR-10 DV cam. As you can tell, I do lots of Satalite taping
onto miniDV tapes, and I have lots more samples, he, he...

just click this <<DOWNLOAD>> link for the sample clip. And, of course, let me know what you think.

-vhelp

[Terry]

I downloaded Virtualdub and the source and auxilliary codes that accompany. There is no clear instructions on how to load the codes into the body of Virtualdub. I am sure I have them in the wrong folder as when I went to transfer to hard drive, I received an error message that proper driver or something was not right, (not at home to duplicate). Any ideas on that??

[Pylle]

Hi all!
I hav e the same problem as Terry and som of the other...
After having "captured" my homevideos from my dv-camcorder to my pc through a fire wire the avi file looks horrible. The jagged edges resulting from the interlacing is ofcourse there, but the picture also looks blurred and fuzzy.....
I know that I shouldnt use my monitor to judge the quality so I have tried to see the avi file on my tv, both through the tv-out on my graphic card ( which usually gives perfect pictures on my tv), and by convering the avi file to xsvcd and svcd and playing them on my stand alone dvd-player.
The quality is still lousy...... When i connect my camcorder directly to my TV the picture is excellent...

I hav read all the threads in this forum and I did not really find any actual answer how to solve the problem, but maybe I just didnt look hard enough.... Please help

[Datavac]

I have also experienced poor quality images including mozaic and blurry looking pictures and blockness with the video that I capture from a sony dv camera. I use Ulead video studio 6 to bring it in and Panasonic to encode it to vcd from a type 2 AVI. I hav also used the Ulead settings and CCE with same results. I can create excellent vcd from tv captures with my all-in-one and from dvds I own. I get a strange halo of blockness around people and object in the captured video. The orginal video is clear when viewed on computer and from camera to tv. I believe there is got to be some setting or filter for captured video because all my other video does not have that problem. If someone gets great vdc results from captured video from the lens not from some analog or svideo input please explain the process they use to achieve it. Eargly waiting some solution to this quandary, I am out of Ideas.

[yg1968]

Hi,

I also have a Sony (TRV-25). I find that capturing with Ulead DVD Movie Factory gives me an almost perfect movie when importing from DV. Ulead DVD Movie Factory can be used to create VCDs or DVDs. It is relatively inexpensive and has a trial version.

The only problem is that I haven`t been able to capture with the analog passthrough (i.e analog to digital conversion feature) with Ulead DVD Movie Factory. For that I use Ulead VideoStudio. However, the results aren't as good.

Hope this helps,

YG

[yg1968]

Just to update my comments above. I now use DVIO with the analog passthrough with improved results.

See this thread for other comments on DV.

http://forum.vcdhelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=78687&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

[Scobo]

I've started to get this mosaic coloured block noise in my DV AVI's too.
Dirt on the camcorders heads sounds likely and my camcorders manual (Canon MV500i) suggests this too but one thing contradicts this.
I also get it with DV to AV pass-through. Surely there must be some other problem as a tape is not used in this mode.

[yg1968]

Hi,

I thought that I had a problem with my analog pass through until I realized that it was the microsoft DV drivers that were creating these artifacts. As soon as you encode to mpeg2 or export back to your DV camera, the artifacts will disappear.

In other words, these artifacts show up because of the lousy quality of playback with the microsoft DV drivers on a (DV) avi file. Unfortunately, we have to live with these DV drivers (using other DV drivers can create conflicts with certain capture software). When I used the Sony DV drivers, the artifacts did not show up (I no longer use the Sony drivers because of potential conflict with the microsoft DV drivers).

I came to realize this when I was using the DVIO freeware program (a great little program, incidentally) and exported an avi (DV) file back to my camcorder. The quality had not changed from the initial imported file. I then encoded the avi (DV) file to mpeg2 and the artifacts had suddenly disappeared. I had a crisp and perfect picture once more.

Hope this helps solve this little mystery,

YG

DVIO is available on this website:

http://www.carr-engineering.com/dvio.htm

[Scobo]

yg1968,
Thanks for the input but were talking large chequered multi-colour blocks here not compression artifacts.
When I encode to mpeg2 the blocks are still there.

[yg1968]

Have you tried exporting back to your miniDV camcorder to see if it is your camcorder that is the problem. Like I said DVIO is a good way to test this. If the image that you export and record back on your miniDV camcorder is different from what you had before you imported it then your camera is perhaps the problem.

[vhelp]

scobo,

Ahh, i THINK I know what you're talking about. I had this similar? problem
too. ...I think.
Anyways, Whenever I would firewire my miniDV footage to my HD, on
ocassion I would see rows of "blocks" or dominoes, sometimes fills the
screen or sometimes a handful and sometimes quite colorful.
I never quite figure out EXACTLY what caused this, other than that
I accounted it due to my SYSTEMs low resources at the time. You see,
sometimes our system leaks resources, even when we don't do much anything,
but that it could have ben due to an earlier loaded/running application,
or a poorely closed down app or something like that.
The only way I could get a better blockles firewire transfer was to:
* shut down the whole system and restart.
* and only, start up the firewire transfer app (not capture) and do my
miniDV transfers. My ZR-10 dos not have PASS-THROUGH, so I can't veryify
if the above is totally true that end route, but this still may be
your problem too, even via PASS-THROUGH!! Somehow, you have a leak
in your resources and/or some form of CPU % leak, OR you have a loose
TIMER/TICKER going on in your CPU or MB. You have to find out where it
it. I found mine to be my LAN. Even though I stoped using it weeks
ago, (no more networking for me, due to sluggish performance) I was
plauged by some hidden TIMER/TICKER going on in the bground inside my
CPU or MB. I narrowed it down to my LAN being left on in my BIOS, cause
I thought that as long as I don't have a connection to my other CPU,
I would be fine. WRONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Shut it off!! May be your cause too. or anothre form of IRQ going on.
Or, software driver causing hovac w/ your previously working drivers, etc.

Look into the above and then some for your block issues.


-vhelp

[Scobo]

Finally solved the problem.
After hours of tweaking my system from the BIOS to juggling my PCI cards around, it turns out my firewire cable was faulty !
I was about to try a new firewire card but borrowed a cable to try first and this fixed the problem. The old one must have been sending the firewire card a poor signal.

[yg1968]

Another useful program (amcap) to import or export an Avi (DV) file:

http://www.pinnaclesys.com/support/display.asp?FileID=910&ProductID=438