Re: DV home video archiving - what format?
- From: "Jukka Aho" <jukka.aho@xxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 5 Dec 2005 13:25:57 +0200
Ricky Rudolph wrote:
> I have some home video on mini DV tapes that I want to transfer
> to better media for "archival" purpose. [...] My experimentation
> with MPEG formats so far has yielded only disappointing results:
> noticeable loss of video quality (blurriness that I attribute to
> re-compression), and perhaps even more annoying, motion artifacts.
> It seems that it doesn't matter whether I choose progressive or
> interlaced formats, I still see interlacing-related artifacts
> (frames that look like composites of temporally-spaced fields).
You only see "artifacts" (which really aren't!) because you're looking
the video on a computer, with a media player (or a codec) that does not
know how to handle interlaced data properly. Digital storage formats
often lump adjacent fields into "frames" where the fields are
interleaved into each other as if they were part of the same picture -
and lazily-coded computer programs often display them as such! - but TV
sets never display interlaced signals that way.
> I haven't trying burning it on a DVD-R and playing it back
> on a TV, so I don't know if I will see the same artifacts on a TV.
If properly encoded, you won't. The motion in a properly encoded
interlaced DVD will be smooth as silk, just like when watchng a live tv
broadcast, and the "artifacts" (if noticeable) will be the same you see
on a live tv broadcast.
> The thing that I don't understand is: I never noticed any interlacing
> artifacts when saving in AVI format. That causes me to suspect that
> the mini DV footages are not interlaced.
DV footage _may_ be "not interlaced" (i.e. in a "progressive" format),
but that's a special case. Most home camcorders can only shoot pictures
in an interlaced mode. Therefore, most DV material you're likely to
encounter _is_ interlaced.
If you're not seeing the "artifacts" on a computer screen when you play
back the clips you have captured from your DV camcorder, you're probably
just using a player or a codec that knows about interlacing, and tries
to mask its effects on a progressive display - one way or the other. If
you want to see how your DV video _really_ looks like (on the storage
format level, without any sugar-coating for non-interlaced displays,
such as modern computer monitors), download VirtualDub
(http://www.virtualdub.org/) and open your DV video in there.
> Can someone tell me whether consumer mini DV camcorders use
> progressive or interlaced scanning?
Definitely interlaced, unless you have bought a higher-end prosumer or
pro model that also allows (selectively) shooting in a progressive mode.
> Also, in my situation (i.e. a consumer trying to archive home videos,
> and not wanting to sink too much money into the project), what are
> my best choices w.r.t. editing software, video format, and physical
> media?
It's a tough call, but if we're really discussing about archiving the
original DV data instead of converting it to lesser quality "playback"
formats, I would simply keep the material on the MiniDV tapes for the
time being.
DVD-R (when bought in those big 50 or 100 disc cakeboxes) already seems
to be a cheaper-per-gigabyte medium than MiniDV tapes, but the storage
capacity of a single-sided, single-layer DVD-R disc is just
inconveniently low: you would actually need three discs for storing the
contents of a single MiniDV tape. Having a bookshelf full of DVD-Rs with
20 minutes of video on each would be a bit awkward, at least in my
opinion.
Two-layer discs would fare a little bit better, but even those do not
have enough capacity for holding a full 60 minute tape in its original
format - and they're currently much more expensive than single-layer
blanks.
Maybe some future DVD derivative (Blu-ray et al) will solve the problem
in the future, but it will still take years before these solutions will
become widely available and the prices will drop to an affordable level.
--
znark
.
- Follow-Ups:
- Re: DV home video archiving - what format?
- From: Richard Crowley
- Re: DV home video archiving - what format?
- References:
- DV home video archiving - what format?
- From: Ricky Rudolph
- DV home video archiving - what format?
- Prev by Date: Re: Ah, crap. I messed up the interlacing on a dvd
- Next by Date: MJPEG To AVI Convertion
- Previous by thread: Re: DV home video archiving - what format?
- Next by thread: Re: DV home video archiving - what format?
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
