Crap Quality, DCR-TRV22E

[sletts02]

OK, after reading other threads, other sites etc I still don't have a straight answer.

I own a DCR-TRV22E, sony handycam.

When playing through TV, LCD screen it is awsome quality, no quality loss.

Now, when I play through my computer it gives me very bad quality video. At a tiny res of 320x240 it appears to have pretty ok quality, frame rate however once upped to a good resolution like 640x480 I have TERRIBLE quality video!

PC specs:
P4 2.0ghz
256mb RAM
Win XP

I use USB to capture my video, however it states that no frames where dropped?

I have tried the following programs aswell:
ULEAD
PINNACLE
WMM

[Marc Peters]

Simple. Switch from capturing using USB to capturing via firewire.

[sletts02]

What is the difference?

I would have to buy a card, and I don't really want to do that unless its completely nessecary.

[Marc Peters]

It is completely necessary if you want to maximise quality. Do a search on the forums to find out how many times this has been asked

[Mike Thorpe]

What is the difference?

I would have to buy a card, and I don't really want to do that unless its completely nessecary.

It is absolutely necessary.

I even designed an emoticon: :firewire:

(yes, i'm a bloody geek)

[sletts02]

So it is impossible to capture DV format through USB?

[Marc Peters]

A firewire card is about £10/$10. The USB port on a miniDV camcorder is not designed for DV transfer.

[Crusty]

USB is slow and can't handle the full bandwidth of DV video and audio. DV needs about 34 Mbps, USB (1) can only handle about 12 Mbps, so the camera has to compress the video or else drop frames to keep up. The extra compression is the likely culprit in your video quality problem.

Firewire can do 400 Mbps, so 34 Mbps is no strain.


1) There are two types of USB now. The one your camera has is called USB-1. The newer type is called USB-2 and can supposedly handle 480 Mbps, but there's so much work handling USB protocols that the actual effective data rate is somewhat less than Firewire. Still more than fast enough for DV though. I don't know of any cameras that have USB-2 ports yet.

[bgarthp]

just to confuse the issue, my Panasonic NVGS 75 advertises on the box: "USB 2.0 - DV Data Streaming"

Although I have only used the USB to transfer stills from the memory card, because I've already got a firewire set-up.

I still think it's worth getting a Firewire card/cable, you get the device control and you can capture with your editing app of choice, I'm pretty sure you have to use the Panasonic Software to use USB to transfer DV data (if you can actually do this).