Pioneer PRV-9000 Question

[tomclary]

I recently got a DVD-R from a video duplication house that used a Pioneer PRV-9000 to master the disk. We provided them a master in DV format on a DVCAM format tape. DV is 720x480 but the encoded video on the DVD was only 352x480. I have not gotten an answer yet on my follow up question if the duplication house used an analog interface or the IEEE 1394 interface on the PRV-9000. Does anyone out know if it makes a difference which interface is used? I would be annoyed to find that it drops the resolution when given digital data. The analog interface being 352 pixels does not seem so heinous.

The PVR-9000 only offers a 1 hour or 2 hour selection. There are no other encoding options for DVD Video format output.

[pluche]

I am not an expert on this matter but i would assume they converted via the firewire port so DV to MPEG2; what is the best: DV to MPEG2 via firewire or via analog: my guess is firewire so digital to digital however I wonder whether you can see the difference on a normal, good quality TV;
I can do the same on my Panasonic recorder;Note: DV is a different compression than MPEG2
1 hour DV is +- 13 Gb
1 hour MPEG2 (for DVD) is +- 2 Gb

[tomclary]

I have not gotten the answer back from the video duplication house yet but my guess is they used an analog format. Their primary business is video duplication from a wide range of sources only a few being the DV format and firewire. So they might not be as aware of the resolution. Yes, I understand DV is very different from MPEG-2.

Everyone that has looked at the video says it looks good but I feel cheated out of half my pixels.

Perhaps you could try an experiment with your Panasonic recorder? Record some video with the analog inputs and some with the firewire inputs. Then use ifoEdit or some other utility to see what the resolution the video encode at for each case. I am curious.

[jfebus]

Hi,

I think they just convert it using analog to digital!

That is the resolution I use to get my VHS in a DVD...but fot DV to DVD i use 720x480...

Using a VHS there is no use for all the 720x480 pixels, but for dv source it is another story...

Regards,

[Cornucopia]

I think you need to check again about what resolution your are being told is on the disc...

Before you get upset about this answer, know this:
1. I have a PVR-9000
2. I'm looking at the manual right now
3. It says "DVD-Video mode only records in 2 levels--1 hr (~9.8 Mbps, w/2chAC3) or 2hr (~4.9Mbps w/2chAC3), and both are full D1 MPEG2 (720x480NTSC) with very high quality prefiltering"
4. Everything I've done on it has looked BEAUTIFUL, especially stuff transferred from VHS, as it has filtering algorithms specifically made with that in mind
5. What I and any other self-respecting authoring place would do would be to use the Firewire input to xfer it digitally from DV

What proggy did you use to figure out what resolution you were getting?

Let us know what they say,

Scott

[PhilipL]

Withdrawn

[tomclary]

4. Everything I've done on it has looked BEAUTIFUL, especially stuff transferred from VHS, as it has filtering algorithms specifically made with that in mind
5. What I and any other self-respecting authoring place would do would be to use the Firewire input to xfer it digitally from DV

What proggy did you use to figure out what resolution you were getting?

The quality does not look bad by any means. The question is, is it as good as it could be. One difference is that this is a video duplication house not a DVD authoring house by any means. So they may not know the difference.

I used ifoEdit to look at the ifo files. I also used DVD Decrypter to extract part of the video stream. They both agreed with 352x480. PowerDVD says 704x480 which is interesting because 704 is 352 * 2. I have checked a number of other DVD's in PowerDVD, they all said 720x480.

I was hoping to get in contact with some owners of this recorder. Perhaps you could try an experiment and capture some analog video to a DVD-RW. Then look at it with ifoEdit to see what resolution it is reported as.

Have you guys actually used ifoEdit or other utilities to look at the disks created by this recorder?

I have not gotten a reply back from the video duplication place yet.

[PhilipL]

Withdrawn

[tomclary]

We seem to have quite a mystery on our hands here. It does seem that my video duplication house used the Firewire interface based on the reported resolution. Now to play devils advocate here, how do you really know what the resolution the video is encoded on the disk at? I am not sure visually if you can tell conclusively.

I tried ReMPEG because it gives format information on some of the VOB's from the PRV-9000 dvd, it crashed consistently when it was scanning the VOB. If I tried to scan the same VOB again, it came back with a message unsupported resolution. It works on other VOB's I tried that are 720x480.

Can you guys suggest any other programs to analyze VOB's to get their MPEG 2 characteristics?

[tomclary]

FYI, VobEdit v0.6 says the video resolution is 704x480 which seems a bit more acceptable.

[leebo]

Well, here I go again, disagreeing with other owners of this recorder.

I have had the DVR-7000 (exactly the same recorder except for the color of the unit and no BNC connectors on the back) for a year now.

I have been dis-satisfied with this units picture quality in "VOB" mode from the begining. It records in CBR in this mode, and the artifacting in highly detailed scenes (like tree leaves) and fast motion scenes is horrible!
Especially bad is transfers using firewire (maybe because of the extra detail?).
I only use this mode for making a quick transfer to DVD.

If I want good picture quality, I record in whats called "VR" mode, which results in a single VRO file. This file is similar to the VOB's the recorder makes, except it's VBR and editable, and you can choose the quality level and resolution.

To the other owners of this machine: Have you recorded something highly detailed and contrasty, like tree leaves blowing in the wind and played it back? I can't believe I'm the only one who sees this.

And tomclary, I'll make a test recording later and report back what resolution mpeg2vcr reports.

[leebo]

Coulden't find a way to get mpeg2vcr to report file details, so I used DVD MovieFactory 2.0.

Recordings in the 2 hour mode are reported as 720X480 at 4710 Kbits/sec. All recordings have the same bitrate and frame size.

[PhilipL]

Withdrawn

[eeit232]

This seems to me like an interlaced/progressive issue. The halving of reported vertical resolution tallies up with two frames being used to represent the whole picture, with half the vertical lines on each frame, i.e. interlaced. So both 352 and 704 are correct answers, but the interpretation of the question differs.

[leebo]

Even fast moving complex footage doesn't push it much above 5Mbits/sec, which is the recording rate of the 2 hour CBR.

Phillip,

Have you checked the picture quality using the type of footage I described above?
The difference in picture quality isn't so apparent when recording a movie or TV show, but when recording from mini DV, boy is it noticable!

Maybe Pioneer uses other tricks to hide the artifacting in VR mode, but with my recorder it is DEFINITELY superior to Video mode!

[tomclary]

This seems to me like an interlaced/progressive issue. The halving of reported vertical resolution tallies up with two frames being used to represent the whole picture, with half the vertical lines on each frame, i.e. interlaced. So both 352 and 704 are correct answers, but the interpretation of the question differs.

We have only been talking about the horizontal resolution. The vertical resolution has always been 480 for NTSC and 576 for PAL as expected so I do not believe it has anything to do with interlaced or progressive.

[tomclary]

Another interesting thing to mention is a friend took a VOB from my DVD-R that was created on the Pioneer and had IfoEdit generate new ifo files for it. The size of the video in the new ifo file was 704x480.

Since some of you guys paid Pioneer good money for the recorder, perhaps you could ask them to explain the differences we are seeing here. You would hope when it came to DVD's, Pioneer would know what they are doing.

[PhilipL]

Withdrawn

[leebo]

Have you tried copying via S-Video to the Pioneer in place of Firewire? Often the action of using S-Video and its slight reduction in quality gives the encoder a much easier time.

Regards

Philip

Yeah, S-Video is the ONLY input I use now. It was very disappointing to find the firewire input was useless.