the best final image $ for $ ?

whatever_works · #1 (**permalink**) 10-23-2006, 12:24 PM

I am playing with the idea of getting away from peeknuckle systems. My biggest disappointment was the disparity of the video quality from my camera to the finished rendering of the svcd.
I want to quote what I read in GTWCMT's thread
"I Build Pro editing systems... "http://www.videoforums.co.uk/perfect-video-editing-pc/10534-i-build-pro-editing-systems.html

Capture isnt really needed any longer with digital cards, You capture software will dictate its data flow and I know that some capturing reduces the quality by around 50%, 77K to 46K in many cases which will make or break the quality of the out put.

I have Pinacle studio 8 with a lot of extras. It was fun messing with all the doo-dad's, it's really not all that bad a tool. But PERSONALY above all, I would opt for image quality and simply try to be inventive in the ways I cut and manipulate what limited editing options I have before compromising even small amounts of image quality.
That said I am a poor man, with limited means, particularly in the short term.
Still I am tempted to toss something like 236.863 GBP or Canadian $500 into a fresh
Software start if It could mean that I could have a higher definition, post rendering.
My first video Camera was a Sony VCD TR81 HI8 camera. And that was a BEAUTIFUL little friend!
When I last went to live in Thailand for 16 months, I stopped at the sony store and asked the same salesmen
To pleasantly surprise me again, but this time with a digital version. I explicitly made references to the
Previous camera he had sold me, and he seemed in tune to my needs. He presented me with the sony
PC101 mini digital camera, which I immediately balked at on the premise of it being designed around compactibilty. He insisted. I was hours from flight time and my friend driving me to the airport was waiting.
So now I have to live with the fact that the one year+ of intensive video shooting was done from a camera I would
LOVE to crush under my foot! But I do not have to live with the fact that my renderings come up looking "blocky"
And I’m sure that’s not a description unheard of in this group. And I’m sure that the new system I am building could give pinacle a better chance to please me. But from what I have been reading recently makes me think there may be a better way??????
So I am not asking why you think the system you are financially committed to is best, or which is more intuitive which is more accessible , puts less demands on a system, has better add – on’s or or or the easy learning curve. But to anyone who has managed to read this far into the babble , which editing software is potentially capable of giving the best final image $ for $ ?
A debt of gratitude!!!!!!
Rick

Andy Lockwood · #2 (**permalink**) 10-23-2006, 02:08 PM

Originally Posted by whatever_works

...My biggest disappointment was the disparity of the video quality from my camera to the finished rendering of the svcd....

Why on earth would you want to burn to svcd? Surely dvd is the way to go for TV viewing....? I can't think of anyone I know that still uses vcd. Mostly because, I guess of the drop in quality in the final product. After all, your camera is capturing in uncompressed AVI and svcd is compressed to hell (and back!)

miwhel · #3 (**permalink**) 10-23-2006, 04:23 PM

Andy is spot on SVCD was and is awful.

It's not the software that is the problem, if you are capturing through firewire, it uses DV-AVI just like other cheap and expensive editors and this is a standard.

If you are happy with pinnacle and only want to change in order to try and get better quality, then save your money.

You say that you dislike your camera and with the poor quality SVCD it sounds like you are just unhappy with the whole situation, try and learn more about getting the best from your camera settings and try export to DVD and maybe things will improve.

Spending money on new software could leave you in the same position just $500 lighter.

Mark W · #4 (**permalink**) 10-23-2006, 06:03 PM

I agree, nothing wrong with that camera or the software, I am sure the blocky results are because you are using svcd.

Svcd can give decent quality but they look blocky on fast moving material.

It may also be possible that you are not getting the best from the svcds when making them if you are not expirieced at making them but i suspect it is the limitations of the medium that are the problem.

Andy Lockwood · #5 (**permalink**) 10-23-2006, 06:57 PM

I'm deeply intruiged by this claim too.

Capture isnt really needed any longer with digital cards, You capture software will dictate its data flow and I know that some capturing reduces the quality by around 50%, 77K to 46K in many cases which will make or break the quality of the out put.

Surely capture is always neccesary unless you have recorded to a firestore or something similar. And how, (bear with me here I'm not a techy) would a slow data flow affect the capture quality in any case? I would have thought just because the flow maybe slow (if even that happens) it is still digital data and therefore as long as it arrives, it's still the same.

Is it me? Am I missing something? Should I have known this all along? Or is it horse doodey?

Marc Peters · #6 (**permalink**) 10-23-2006, 07:28 PM

If you have miniDV camera, the compression used is 5:1 or there abouts using intraframe compression. When you "transfer" from your camera to PC using a firewire cable, you won't be 're-compressing' so won't lose quality. To say that capture reduces quality on digital transfer by firewire by 50 % is wrong. So what you see on your camera compared to your end result is the quality loss from encoding to SVCD - this is typically most obvious in "blocky artifacts".

Solution? Invest in a DVD burner

Andy Lockwood · #7 (**permalink**) 10-23-2006, 07:32 PM

Originally Posted by Marc Peters

... When you "transfer" from your camera to PC using a firewire cable, you won't be 're-compressing' so won't lose quality. To say that capture reduces quality on digital transfer by firewire by 50 % is wrong.....

Horse Doodey it is then. Thought I was in a freaky weird parallell universe for a moment...

whatever_works · #8 (**permalink**) 10-23-2006, 09:01 PM

Originally Posted by Mark W

I agree, nothing wrong with that camera or the software, I am sure the blocky results are because you are using svcd.

Svcd can give decent quality but they look blocky on fast moving material.

It may also be possible that you are not getting the best from the svcds when making them if you are not expirieced at making them but i suspect it is the limitations of the medium that are the problem.

Thank you very much to all who posted replies.
I will consider what you all have said here. Maybe I will delay the new software untill I have had chance to render a DVD with pinacle when I get the new system.
The reason I was rendering in SVCD, was that in 2002 DVD burners hadn't got quite as cheap yet and I was an English teacher on a budget in Bangkok. Even the cheap places like Panthip plaza weren't quite cheap enough.

What you have said about blockyness and motion is true and also probably when the lighting was less than ideal.
But I assure you every setting governing quality on both the camera and the software was made with the consideration of quality. I don't recall the compression I used but I remember I had to leave it running overnight to complete.
Another quality loss isue may have been due to the loose nut behind the record button.

Thanks again.

Andy Lockwood · #9 (**permalink**) 10-23-2006, 09:31 PM

Originally Posted by whatever_works

....
Another quality loss isue may have been due to the loose nut behind the record button.
...

I must remember that one...