MOVIE MAKER QUALITY GONE?

G

Guest

CAPTURING FROM CAMCORDER TO WMV WAS GIVING A 100% QUALITY READING USING THE
AVI CODEC TOOL. NOW, I'M ONLY GETTING A QUALITY READING OF 70%, WHICH IS
VISIBLY INFERIOR. LOOKING FOR SUGGESTIONS AS TO WHAT MIGHT HAVE CAUSED THIS.
XP HAS UPDATED TO SP2 - COULD THIS BE THE PROBLEM?
 
C

Cari \(MS-MVP\)

Your Caps Lock key seems to be stuck, which could be a problem.

Capturing in DV-AVI will give the best resolution. So will defragging the
hard drive before capturing.
 
G

Guest

Thanks for your "warm" welcome and advice.
I have concluded and had confirmed, that the final DVD image is superior
when "capturing" in WMV and decompressing to MPEG-2 , as opposed to
compressing from DV-AVI (Caps ok ?) to MPEG-2.
Something within the codec has I suspect gone screwy.
Full maintainence is conducted weekly, which of course includes
DEFRAGMENTATION
 
G

Graham Hughes

Alan,
I'm suprised you find compressing to wmv, then compressing to Mpeg actually
gives a better result than capturing as dv-avi, which is a like for like
capture, so no quality loss, no compression from the tape, then just
compressing once to dvd.
You cannot decompress the quality from WMV to dvd, it's compressing it, but
using a different codec.
What is this reading you mention? Can you run through the settings you
choose when you capture.

As for Cari's mention of the cap's lock key, we try to read tens of messages
every day and give construcvtive advice, anything which makes this harder is
a pain in the butt, and caps is not only hard to read, but in on-line
forums/discussions is counted as shouting - ie rude. Of course the use of
caps for items such as dv-avi is fine when needed.

--
Graham Hughes
MVP Digital Media
www.myvideoproblems.co.uk
www.dvds2treasure.com
www.simplydv.com
 
G

Guest

Graham,
Thanks for your input.
I arrived at the Movie Maker, capture to WMV situation, after literally
months of playing around . I'm retired and have lots of time. Truthfully, I
was so disappointed with the quality of a software produced "Home Movie" DVD
I went searching for quality. I have captured/transferred so much Mini-dv and
digital 8 to the PC for processing, it makes my head spin just thinking of it.
Anyway, In desperation, some months ago, I opened up Movie Maker, captured
in DV-AVI Pal and then in High Quality Video (pal), which is WMV progressive
The difference was very noticable. It did not matter what encoding program
I used to create an MPEG -2 or ISO file, The result was MUCH superior when
the original capture was WMV.
I collected a bunch of DVDs and took them to a friend who runs a Video
Broadcast type company and he and his staff all picked out the
WMV/MPEG-2/DVDs as superior.
They also assumed it was a DV-AVI/MPEG-2/DVD sequence. Not so.
The AVI CODEC information tool I have referred to :
http://avicodec.duby.info is what reads a 100% file quality,-- or used
to. Truthfully I'm not that clear what it's reading but I know when it
says 100% the video looks wonderful. When it reads 70% it looks bad ---and
that's before it gets to MPEG-2.
DV-AVI type 2 , irrespective of capture/transfer program clocks in at 90%
quality using the AVIcodec tool. It's a good guage if nothing else.
WMV , after completing update to XP-SP2 is , out of the blue, only reading
70--75 % max. It looks horrible.
The terminology I used, Compress/decompress is, I'm sure incorrect. My
thinking is/was, WMV---200MB, opens up to, for example, 400+ MB when encoded
to MPEG-2. Where as starting with DV AVI of say, 800 MB it compresses down
to, for example,300MB. Hence, I began wondering if "expanding" a captured
file was beneficial as opposed to shrinking, which is not beneficial. Yes, I
realise WMV is compressed. Bottom line though, for me at least, the results
were excellent. Even viewing on a 53" TV .
Trying to get back my 100% WMV. I suspect a codec parameter has defaulted
to "GOOD" quality instead of "High Quality". I cannot find the
window/program that would allow an adjustment of the Windows WMV9 , which I
am sure was available to me for configuring parameters. It's gone.
Thanks,
Alan.
 
G

Graham Hughes

Hi Alan,
I do it for a living and have done for years ;)
One thing that may make a difference here is, I notice you display on a 53"
tv, I assume this is a lcd or similar screen. This will make a difference,
as normal crt screens display video using an ingerlaced signal, whereas the
lcd/plasma options will best view using progressive, which the WMV would be.
I would check to ensure you still have the latest versions of DirectX,
windows media encoder and WMP. If you need to install newer versions then
install one at a time, from a saved download to the pc, rebooting after each
install.

Graham


--
Graham Hughes
MVP Digital Media
www.myvideoproblems.co.uk
www.dvds2treasure.com
www.simplydv.com
 
G

Guest

Thanks Graham.
The quality seen is mostly on a 53", which is switchable and displays I + P.
On an old 21 inch TV and even on the PC monitor the "difference" is obvious.
Yes, I did not work within your industry, that's why I took a bunch of tapes
and DVDs to my friend who is in the "hardware" side of the business. Viewing
on his Pro monitors-- WMV----MPEG-2-----DVD looked much better.
Anyway, thank you. Think I have resolved the issue.
Un-installed XP-SP2 all my codecs.
Restored system (non destructive) to a few weeks back , reinstalled my codec
pack and my 100% WMV is back.
Alan
 
G

Guest

Graham,

I've been experimenting with Movie Maker capture and found out that even
DV-AVI raw captured file does not produce image quality on a TV (my laptop is
connected to a TV set via video cable) similar to that, which i achieved by
playing the tape straight from the camcorder. What makes you say that there
is "no quality loss"?

GV
 
G

Graham Hughes

RAW is different to a dv-avi file, which is it you are capturing to?
When the movie is recorded to the minidv tape it is written using a dv
compression.
When transferred to the pc this is written as a dv-avi file (a mov to Macs),
but is an exact copy of the information on the tape.

Items which may affect the quality as shown on the tv.
The app you are using to send it to the tv, it may be sending a progressive
not interlaced signal out.
The way the laptop is connected to the tv. S-video when the tv is not
s-video compliant
Whether anything was done to the file, but here we should assume you are
watching the clip you have just captured.

Way to test if the quality remains the same.
Send the captured clip straight back out to the camcorder and play it on the
tv. It should be exactly the same as the original tape.

dv is compressed at a 5.1 ratio, this does not alter when it gets to the pc,
it is like for like.
If you saved a dv-avi file 10 times it should still be exactly the same.
When you start to add transitions you will get an extremely small amount fo
degradation on the area of video that the transition is on, but so small our
eyes could not tell. If you added several effects, and changed the
transition after each save the quality might get to a point where you could
detect it has gone down.

Hope this helps.

Graham

--
Graham Hughes
MVP Digital Media
www.myvideoproblems.co.uk
www.dvds2treasure.com
www.simplydv.com
 
G

Guest

Thanks Graham. I went through most of your advice in your web pages and have
this question: could it be the case that my DV-AVI video quality played on a
TV diminished because I had other programs running (including Internet
browsing) during capture?

Also, should I expect any quality degradation if playing back DV-AVI on a TV
using just video cable?

I am using Windows Movie Maker 2.1. How do I get to know if it is sending
progressive or interlaced signal out?

Thanks,
GV
 
G

Graham Hughes

see below

--
Graham Hughes
MVP Digital Media
www.myvideoproblems.co.uk
www.dvds2treasure.com
www.simplydv.com


GV said:
Thanks Graham. I went through most of your advice in your web pages and
have
this question: could it be the case that my DV-AVI video quality played on
a
TV diminished because I had other programs running (including Internet
browsing) during capture?
Click to expand...

The only degradation would be from dropped frames which may be caused by the
pc doing other tasks. As you are basically only capturing 1's and 0's if you
get the pciture you should get the picture, it shouldn't be degraded as
analogue video could.
Also, should I expect any quality degradation if playing back DV-AVI on a
TV
using just video cable?
Click to expand...
From where? The pc? If so, you could, as it depends on the software and
connection type, you have now gone from digital to analogue, and although
you also do this with the cam when connecting it direct to the tv, you don't
have the other variables of software.
I am using Windows Movie Maker 2.1. How do I get to know if it is sending
progressive or interlaced signal out?
Click to expand...

dv is interlaced so as long as you don't save it as wmv anywhere along the
line it will be interlaced.
 
G

Guest

Graham, but what happens to the frame if some bits go missing during capture?
Would the whole frame be discarded? I presume dv-avi protocol must have some
checksumming mechanism built in?

If some frames are missed during capture, would this result in less contrast
picture on the TV screen when played back from the laptop? Or would missed
frames produce some other sort of quality loss?

Regards,
GV
 
G

Graham Hughes

A dropped frame is just that, teh whole frame is missing.
You have 25 or 29.97 frames per second depending on whether you are in PAL
or NTSC land.
The frame will not be their at all, so will appear on playback to be a sort
of jittery motion, you have frames 1, 2, 3, 4 ,5 missing 6 have 7 etc..
So when playing back, you see the frames you have but then jump from frame 5
to frame 7, so miss whatever was recorded on frame 6 of the tape. If it was
a motion shot witha car say moving from left to right it will appear to
jump slightly further forward on it's travels.
Most apps have a counter for dropped frames. MM doesn't.
No lack of contrast or anything like that, as the info is either there or
not there.

--
Graham Hughes
MVP Digital Media
www.myvideoproblems.co.uk
www.dvds2treasure.com
www.simplydv.com
 
G

Guest

So I suppose wmv file is progressive? Therefore sending video signal from
such file on a PC to an analog TV should always result in less quality video.
Right?

:
 

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