DV / AVI capture quality

[psiman]

Can someone help on a 'newbie' type question.

I have a Sony PC3 Digital Cam, recording onto MiniDV

I use a plain Dazzle Firewire card to connect my Sony PC3 to my PC. Here I download my DV files. I have some questions with reference to quality.

When I view my recordings via the analogue outputs of my Cam to a TV set the the quality looks quite good, sharp edges and clear on movement etc.

When I download this file via Firewire to my PC and replay the same untampered AVI (no compression, such as TMPGenc etc.), then the quality is not so good. I can see a lot of pixelation around the edges of objects, and distortion on movement.

I am downloading via either Windows Movie Maker or Ulead Video Studio 6. The settings are:


(Ulead Settings)
PAL (25fps)
Field Order A
24 bits, 720 x 576, 25fps
DV Video Encoder - Type 1
DV Audio -- PAL 48.000 Khz 16 bit stereo

For Playback of the AVI I am using either Windows Media Player 8 or Power DVD XP.

Incidentally, PC configuration is:

2.4 Ghz pentium 4
512K ram
120 GB hard drive

I am pretty baffled by this. I would have thought that the quality should not have deteriorated so much once on the PC. When I try and compress via TMPGenc, then things only get worse.

Is there a better method for transferring the DV to my PC. I thought that the DV on my CAM was exactly the same as the DV / AVI on my PC, is this incorrect?

Any help much appreciated.

[Thorn]

Windows defaults to displaying DV at 1/4 resolution (right click and set the display resolution in properties, I think). Also, you can get the mainconcept decoder codec which should be better than MS (I don't know how much of a difference it makes visually, but it lets me import into Virtualdub).

As for after encoding, are you encoding to VCD, SVCD, or DVD? I wasn't really satisfied with the VCD results I got so I now make DVDs and the picture looks much better.

Also, Pal may be different than NTSC, but NTSC DV has field B first. Field order should only cause interlacing problems, not blockiness.

[psiman]

Thanks Thorn,

Any further help on changing the default DV resolution within Windows would be appreciated. Can't see anything in XP

Thanks

Psiman

[energy80s]

To change display resolution of DV material in Media Player 6.4 (still the best one for video use) ...

Double-click on a DV AVI file to start Windows Media Player
Stop the movie from playing by clicking the stop button (make sure that the movie is not paused)
Right-click over the main preview window and select "Properties" from the popup menu
Click the "Advanced" tab
Select the DV Video Decoder from the list
Click the "Properties" button
Select "Full" as the resolution
Set "Save As Default"
Click OK
Close the Properties window
Close Windows Media Player
DV movies will now play at full resolution

[xed]

I also use a digicam to capture video and have noticed the exact same drastic degradation of the apparent video quality druing comptuer playback.
Note that I say "apparent video quality," since it's virtually certain that what you're seeing is [1] a bunch of artifacts results from the fact that your computer monitor uses non-interlaced, while the source you're viewing is interlaced, and [2] the fact that a computer monitor has a much higher resolution and thus allows you to see all the grungy details of the cosine transform 5:1 compression with which your camcorders records video signals.
In short, don't worry about the apparent quality of video playback from your camcorder on your computer. I jsut ignore it.
If you want to see what the video really looks like, hook up a monitor to the A/V outs on your camcorder. That provides a much mroe reliable reference.
Moreover, I have observed that I get excellent results from VCD and SVCD and DVD encodes. The apparent degradation in quality on your computer screen is simply an artifact, as far as I can tell, of the difference between non-interlaced and interlaced displays.
If you really want to see the real deal fully interlaced on your computer screen, try buying dedicated DVD playback software like WinDVD or PowerDVD. This kind of dedicated software will let you play back lots idfferent source files compensating for the difference twist interlaced and non-interlaced displays, and produces a nice-looking and accurate representation of what the video will actually look like.
If you don't want to spend the money on WinDVD, though, just ignore it. Concentrate on what the video looks like on your TV and you'll do fine.

[psiman]

Thanks for all the guidance.

Have managed to increase the quality on raw DV avi when using Windows Media Player, i.e. adjusted DV resolution. Although I know see a lot of 'interlace' lines

However when playing back with Power DVD I still have the same quality issues, artifacts, blocking etc. Is there a setting I need to change in Power DVD? I cannot seem to see anything within the configuration setup to allow me to adjust the quality.