which firewire card to buy?????

[lisawebs]

I have a Sony Digital8 camera.

Need to know which IE1394 card (brand) to buy.
I DO NOT want to compress while capturing!!
only later...

I was told that processing the mpegs for a professional DVD (on a PC) don´t have the
same quality than those built on professional studios, is this true??? why???
Is there other sophisticated hardware
to compress???


Thanks

Lisa

[Floppy]

Re: which firewire card to buy?????

Hello

If you wish to get a true professional quality on a PC is not impossible but it costs... a lot

To acchieve the best results a dedicated hardware solution is required rather than a software based encoding or compression.

Dedicated hardware of a good scope to achieve professional results are very expensive, this is why a PC even when equiped with the hability to perform the capture and editing/output job, it is still built with the price in mind, unless you want to choose exact hardware to perform a job you and you only need the PC to perform, creating a customized computer with specific hardware can be done at home to cut costs but then again it is not free.

a PC costs anything from £400 to £???? a reasonably good machine to do a good job with video wont cost you a fortune but add to that dedicated hardware solution and you have taken out 98% of the PC users that cant afford such machine right out of the equation.

You will agree that more than a fair amount of people such as yourself can achieve this now for a reasonable price, two years back and you probably wouldnt even know what this was all about..

Look here for more

Look here for important information on what to look out for.

Last Look here for reasons

This could be a long explanation about why and because

the short answer is, money!!!

[lisawebs]

differences

Thanks for the info,
but still don´t have a brand name to buy
is ADS a trustable one??


Can you explain the concept why
MPEG2 compression by hardware
has more quality than by software,
thought the difference weas only in time...
I understand compression is a process with lots of algorithms,
if they exists on a hardware card
why couldn´t they exist on software???

Thanks again


Lisa

[Floppy]

Hello

Everyone has theire favorite brands or some particular brand that your heart is set on....

I like leadtek for what their products offer in value for money...
Of course the functions I look for and need...

http://www.poweroid-video-editing.co.uk/Novice/Video_Editing_Cards/video_capture_cards.asp

In that link you can find a host of brands that may fulfill your need

I will leave the brand up to you for the reasons I mentioned earlier and for the fact I never heard of ADS. I will lead you to the water but it is you that will have to decide if you wanna drink or not...

hardware dedicated solutions are better than software because of many factors. besides speed and quality the major diference is what the word dedication means.

Software can suffer many influences and depends on all the factors or machine they are installed in like HDD speed, CPU usage, communication, stability and so on...

Hardware depends on just the minimun of factors and doesnt require the use of much CPU, ram, etc...

In comparison it is a very noticeable difference.

Basically a softwre solution depends on the quality of the code and machine it is installed on. The hardware does not.

ADS presents a USBAV card solution that I would touch with a stick, USB is not firewire even in the 2.0 version the tranfer rates are but theoretical the firewire transfers are proved to work with video capture...

I could go on all nite but I am sure you will come back with more questions...

Your question about why something that exists in hardware cant exist on software is simple...

I.E.

Take an apple and bite it, taste the flavour and try to describe that felling and flavour to some one that doesnt have a clue what an apple is without giving them a taste...

Question

Can that person understand your description and get a feel and understand the taste of that apple or would it be better if you let the person bite the apple?

[lisawebs]

about quality

Thanks
I know the differences between hard/soft,
what I don´t understand is how/why hardware compression
offers better quality, for example:

If I compress a video using an old pentium II,
it´ll take 5 times to get done than in a Pentium IV,
but the quality will be the same, is all about bitrate.

so...?

By the way I already bought a firewire card,
everything is finem but the AVI generated is in DV format
and the software I have to edit/compress says
can´t find the DVsd decompressor, so the only thing I can do
is to watch the video in windows media player.

I don´t want to capture in compress format,
since I want to edit first and then (from the best qiality)
generate the mpgs for a DVD.

Do you know where to get this DV decompressor/compressor?

Thanks again I appreciate very much your time and manner.


Lisa

[Floppy]

No softwre codec is going to offer the same quality as a hardwre one. Not just about bitrate, It is all down to the way the data is processed... A little to technical maybe...


Have you tried using Windows Media encoder 2 to convert the format...

A full retail version of Nero 6 also has this capability

Maybe tmpeg can do it as well but I dont know that software.

What are you using to edit...

[lisawebs]

I must learn...

Ok, thanks again,
I need a source to read and learn (suggestion?)

If QUALITY depends on how data is manipulated
I want to know this process in detail, at least main concepts.

To manipulate a DV format AVI isn´t a problem, just need to find
the codec out there. The problem is QUALITY,
after capturing in 720x480 res,
the DV avi properties shows a bitrate of 1560kbps.

I used to work with non-compress AVIs with 6000Kbps bitrate, so I guess I´m loosing quality in this capturing process.
My logic is:
1 second = 30frames * (720x480 pixels) = 10Mb,
so, at 1560 kbps ´there´s a lot missing...

I need to capture into a non-compress AVI, is this possible?


Lisa

[Floppy]

Somer food for brain...

At a refresh rate of 30 fps (frames per second), and true colour (16.7 million) we would be pumping 640x480x30x3 = 28 Mbytes/s through our computer. At that data rate, a 650 Mbyte CDROM would hold only 23 seconds of video! CDROM reader and hard drive technologies don't allow us to transfer data at such high rates, so in order to display digital video it is compressed for storage.

Compressed video streams are read from a hard drive or CDROM, then are decompressed before being displayed. This decompression is very CPU intensive, and displaying the resulting video pushes the limits of the peripheral bus (usually ISA, VLB or PCI) and video cards. If any of the hard drive/CDROM reader, CPU, bus or video card can't keep up with the high amount of data, the video clip appears choppy, or is displayed very small.

The software or hardware that performs the decompression (or compression when recording video) is called a codec (coder- decoder). Dedicated hardware codecs are available either as add-in cards or are integrated into video cards. The advantage of such hardware is that it is optimized specifically for the quick decompression and display of video data, so can provide higher frame rates and larger images than a computer using a purely software-based codec routine. Hardware codecs also reduce the computing load on the system CPU, allowing it to perform other tasks.

Several types of compressed video formats exist, including MPEG (Motion Pictures Experts Group), AVI, MOV, Indeo, MS-Video, Cinepak and Quicktime. In addition, different versions of these formats exist, some incorporating sound. Under optimal conditions, some of these formats can provide compression ratios of up to 100:1 while still providing good quality video.

Some hardware codecs are optimized to work best with a particular video format, but most support the basic operations required to display compressed digital video streams.

Working with uncompressed video

Recommendations: Unless you have the disk space/enormous processing power/hard drive throughput to edit in Uncompressed or Huffyuv, this is the way to go

Huffyuv - Lossless Video Compression, for a price.

Origins: A guy named Ben Rudiak-Gould wrote this wonderful little codec, which is a lossless compression codec for both YUV and RGB video data.

How it Works: Huffyuv is a lossless codec. The name stands for Huffman-compressed YUV. Huffman was a guy who came up with something called "Huffman entropy encoding" which is basically what all lossless compression is originally based off of (Huffman coding is used in things like ZIP, RAR, etc). So you could say that basically Huffyuv simply ZIPs every frame for its compression.

Benefits: Obviously, the biggest benefit is that you have a perfect recreation of the original video data (unless you do colorspace conversions). That means no matter how many times you recompress the video in Huffyuv, you'll still have the same video data that you had in the beginning. This is a very nice thing.

Disadvantages: Unfortunately, while compressing video in Huffyuv is pretty fast, decompressing it is not. Also, due to the very large space requirements (Huffyuv takes a LOT of disk space, sometimes 4x more than even DV), disk throughput becomes a very large factor. Playback at full resolution and full framerate is a daunting task for even the fastest computers.

Recommendations: I only use Huffyuv when I want to store something, only to open it in another application like VirtualDub so I can do some filtering/etc on it. If you have a capture card that allows you to choose your codec while capturing and Huffyuv is an option, by all means use it. But it does take quite a lot of disk space and processing power.

and take a breath...

http://neuron2.net/www.math.berkeley.edu/benrg/huffyuv.html

[lisawebs]

Uncompress

Thanks,
I intend to produce a DVD
and I dont want to rely on the camera,
each time I need a scene, so I plan
to capture all scenes I might use and store them
on a DVDs as datafiles (also as a second library)

But, if I store these files with any kind of compression
then my clip library will have less quality than the original tape (digital8), so that´s why I need to capture DV and store it
in it´s original state, without any loss. I don´t have problems with HD space, that´s cheap.

Windows movie maker doesn´t allow to do this,
the best option offered is to use the DV codec.

I tried other capturing software but none of them
let capture as uncompressed, any idea?
Does the DV captured and processed by a DV codec
is the same file stored in the camera tape?
How much do I loose when storing in DV?

As soon as I get ahead with my project I´ll provide you
with experiences results.

Thanks

Lisa

[Floppy]

Besides the info provided, unless you wanna spend some serious money you wont be able to achieve waht you are looking for...

The point is you will be pleaseantly surprised about the results achieved with programs like i.e. Ulead VideoStudio 8...

Windows Movie maker is not a bad program (quite a powerful editing softwre) but it is lacking in support to a major format like DVD...

If you can notiice the diference between what the camera captured and what the the final file on DVD than u cant count yourself one of the kind... it is all about limitation in a human eye and the way it perceives everything around it...

I am waiting for you posted results...

[lisawebs]

Results

Well, I´ve just seen a test on a DVD and looks fine,
but couldn´t compare to something else,
i.e. with the result of an un-compress file.

It´s fine, but since I spent a lot with the shootings
I just want to be sure to take advantage of the technology
available, not to waste a bit of quality.

I didn´t understand the point about cost,
you mean it is possible to capture un-compress files?

Do you know if the file captured using a DV codec
is the same as the one stored in the digital8 tape?
I mean, it has the same info, then the same quality?

All these questions are important to me because I´m planning to
participate/compete on several video festivals,
and some of them demand a copy in BETA format,

If I make a copy from the DVD I´ll loose another bit of quality,
what if I write back the final video to the digital8 tape?

Will it has the same quality than the original takes captured.
In other words, I want to put my shootings in the PC, edited
and put them back on the digital8 tape with no quality loss.
Then from the digital8 tape I can make a copy on BETA with
less problems... suggestions?

[Floppy]

I do what you call a amateur Video and capture it to the hard drive and then I edit it and burn it onto DVD...

What it seems to me is that you need more than just a PC to do this....

Have you tried linear editing...

If your serious about quality this is what you have to do....

Otherwise the best non linear option will as I say cost a few thousands...

As for this DV codec you ask so much about I dont know of any besides the ones software like Ulead VideoStudio 8 use to capture the files onto DV format...

I am limited in what I can offer as advice to you but I would ask a pro for this not a amateur like me...

I cannot teach you all my tricks in writing (work with somebody and watching them is the best) but I have pointed you in the right direction....

[gary172]

What are the specifications of the BETA recorder system you are trying to use for your submission tape? Is the beta recorder a consumer brand or some high professional/ broadcast quality system?

"Will it has the same quality than the original takes captured.
In other words, I want to put my shootings in the PC, edited
and put them back on the digital8 tape with no quality loss.
Then from the digital8 tape I can make a copy on BETA with
less problems"

There is a fundamental resolution (quality) limitation with analog media (vhs OR beta). The theoretical bandwidth is about 5 Mhz maximum (NTSC). The best horizontal (not vertical) resolution you can get from this is about 450 to 480 lines, but typically is closer to about 350 to 400 lines. (Consumer brand Super Beta is typically around 300 to 350 lines (NTSC) as I recall from years ago).
Standard VHS or beta is around 250 lines.

Here are some links regarding camcorder resolutions versus format:

http://www.hut.fi/~iisakkil/videoformats.html#analog

http://www.cs.tut.fi/~leopold/Ld/VideoFormats.html

http://www.high-techproductions.com/formats.htm

If you capture your DV's as .AVI at bitrate of 8000+, edit it with just about any reasonable software, any quality loss due to compression will be very, very small compared to the quality loss in transfering from the DV camera to BETA and due to the BETA media itself.

Best Regards

[gary172]

From one of your previous posts, you indicate a .AVI bit rate of 1560. This is typically what you get for MPEG1 (VCD quality). Are you sure you set your capture settings correctly? Or did you really (inadvertantly) capture as MPEG1 and thought it was .AVI?

In any event, when i capture Beta or VHS tapes to .AVI(I use Ulead Video Studio 7) I set the video compression to type 1 (I think its called capture preferences) so you need to understand what ever the software is that you use and (manually) set the bitrate accordingly.

Best Regards

[lisawebs]

Jesus!!

I already spent days!!! capturing hours of filming for editing.
Hope what I did is right.


I used the Windows movie maker,
the DV option (at 25Mbps) has no options to set.

The 1560 kbps bitrate is for the audio,
in XP, file properties doesnt show the bitrate for video,

Im not sure if Virtual dub reported 3300 kbps,
Which is the highest bitrate I can get on a DV capturing...

Do you see any difference using
Mainconcept codec (what I use now) or any other.
Any better MPEG2 codec than TMPGenc...

My tests are good, if you want I could place a sample file
for you to download check it out with your experiences

Thanks