Poor video quality after capturing

[tolsen]

Capturing from Sony TRV33E via Firewire to Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo A7600 Athlon XP 2500+ laptop. Using Nero Vision Express NLE. Experiencing significant drop in video quality. Capturing using Windows XP Movie Maker yields similar drop in quality. Setting all made for DVD at highest possible resolution. Is this drop in quality normal or am I doing something wrong?

[Marc Peters]

If you're using a firewire connection, I'd capture with in DV format (lossless transfer), then encode to MPEG after capture. This should help maintain quality.

[tolsen]

If you're using a firewire connection, I'd capture with in DV format (lossless transfer), then encode to MPEG after capture. This should help maintain quality.

The captured video appears to have much less lines than the video straight of of the Sony camcorder. I get a better result by copying over to VHS tape. :( :(

[Marc Peters]

You are using the firewire connection? Does your video have what appear to be lines going through it?

[tolsen]

You are using the firewire connection? Does your video have what appear to be lines going through it?

No lines are going through but it looks like half the horizontal lines are missing. Stepped lines are paricularly prominent on diagonal lines. Yes I am using firewire. I thought these systems would give loss less transfer but apparantly that is not the case. Picture is only perfect when connecting camcorder to TV. Trying different make of camcorder tomorrow to check if there are any improvement. Could this bad quality be due to a poor quality firewire cable? Got mine from Dixons, pretty dear. If it is not caused by the camcorder or software what elso could be wrong. Can I e-mail you a couple of seconds of video so you can view it?

[Marc Peters]

I've a strong feeling it's because you haven't de-interlaced your video; from my site:

To produce a display electric beams controlled by electromagnets scan from side to side across the screen, building a TV picture by creating a series of lines. Unfortunately the way in which TVs were first invented meant that the beam couldn't scan quick enough to create a stable image in one pass. To resolve this problem the picture seen on a TV screen is made up of two separate fields, each of which is displayed alternatively. The first field displays the odd lines (1,3,5...) and the second the even lines (2,4,6...) and thus the interlaced display was born. Effectively each frame is shown at half resolution.

However, progressive displays such as PC monitors don't use this method of building a picture; rather all lines are displayed at the same time. This is a problem. Interlaced video plays at 25fps (pal), but is actually made up of 50 frames (25 frames in each field). Watching an interlaced display on a computer screen will play back both fields at the same time even though the second field is one frame ahead of the first (still with me?), resulting in the following



So, we can't playback interlaced video on a PC.

You can use the deinterlace setting on your editing app to sort this problem out, however this won't be necesary if your end project is a DVD...

Don't hesitate to post again if you need any help!

[tolsen]

I finally managed to correct the problem. Downloaded an update to Windows XP Movie Maker from Microsofts web site. Both Movie Maker and Nero Vision Express now work perfectly well. No more transfer loss.