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Poor Capture Quality (DV Firewire) PLEASE HELP!

Discussion in 'Digital camcorders' started by Lapidot, Apr 19, 2003.

  1. Lapidot

    Lapidot Member

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    Hi,

    I have a sony TRV11 MiniDV camera. I am capturing the video using a firewire card. The quality on the camera is PERFECT (both on the LCD screen as well as plugged directly to the TV). However, the quality on the playback on the computer is WAY inferior! I use Windows Media Player 9.

    The quality issues are as follows:
    - When panning the camera around, the image seem to pixelize... and then stabalizes as the video becomes more static.
    - There are jagged lines around the different objects in the video... and it becomes worse with more movement.

    I have tried capturing with ShowBiz (arcsoft), Pinnacle Studio 8, Windows Movie Maker... and I am getting the same exact results.

    I tried burning the video to the DVD and play it on my TV... but the quality issues persist.

    I have the setting on showbiz to Interlaced.

    Can anyone please help? THANKS!!!
     
  2. malum

    malum Regular member

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    What you capture should be identicle to what's on the tape as it is a digital transfer.
    What are you capturing it as?
    It should be AVI if it's mpeg then you are re-encoding it as you capture.
     
  3. Lapidot

    Lapidot Member

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    I am capturing it as MPEG2. I thought that is the best quality. When I capture it using Movie maker... it saves it as AVI... But it presents the same quality issues.

    PLEASE HELP. THANKS!!!
     
  4. malum

    malum Regular member

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    Well I'm a beginner myself, but you need to capture as AVI. I use Ulead Videostudio to do this, which captures it directly as DV in AVI format.
    Once you are done with your editing then you can convert to mpeg (1 or 2 depending on what you are going to do with it)
     
  5. Lapidot

    Lapidot Member

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    Thanks, I will try it again and reply back.

    Regards,

    Din
     
  6. malum

    malum Regular member

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    Further reading makes me think that this may be a field versus frames problem with your capture.
    This is not something that I fully understand at present but interlaced sources produce two pictures for each frame that are then laced together during playback.
    The way that it is captured can affect this process as can the saving to mpeg

    see here http://www.ulead.com/learning/videoinfo.htm

    there is a section on frames and fields and the rest is useful too.

    You could try deinterlacing when saving
     
  7. Lapidot

    Lapidot Member

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    Excellent information! I will try it and report back!

    Thanks again for all your help!

    Regards,

    Din
     
  8. deago

    deago Member

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    Also these digital camers look like they smear the picture when you move the camera too fast,unlike the old analog stream on a tape type of format.
     
  9. Lapidot

    Lapidot Member

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    I have done some further testing, and following are the results...

    If I capture in MPG using the ShowBiz software and create the DVD I get the problem. However, if I capture it in AVI and burn it... the problem is no longer there. It seems to be playing fine... However, when capturing in AVI... the files are extremely large... and it takes a very long time for it to convert it back to MPG when creating the DVD.

    Any idea why this would happen when capturing in MPG and not in AVI?

    With regards to the last message posted... the digital camera is fine... since when I plug it directly to the TV, the quality is spectacular!

    Thanks!
     
  10. tommays

    tommays Member

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    avi is a more "pure" format mepg is like an MP3
    and when the pc cant keep up it will throw away your quality it takes a long time because there is a huge amount data on and avi and the encoder
    is trying to keep what it thinks will look the best that is why diferent encoders will give different results
    tommays
     

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