Poor Quality when saving in DV PAL format

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Hi, I captured a large amount of video off my camera as plain DV
(uncompressed, 25Mbps) with a little tool called DVIO. One hour of tape is
14.1GB. :-/

Anyway, it plays smoothly and looks good. I've trimmed it down to 5 minutes,
put in transitions, etc. I then saved the video as DV-AVI PAL (25Mbps). But
when I view it, the quality around the edge of moving objects is bad. It
looks like an interlacing problem; the edges of moving objects are blurred
with fine lines.
Hard to explain but there is a captured screenshot at
http://www.image-dump.com/view.php?m=1&x=23466

Has anyone seen this problem or know how to fix it?
Thanks
PS. using MM 2.0, XP-SP1, 2.6GHz P4, 512M.
 
Yes, I simply cropped the image to an interesting, relevant part of the
image. The full-size image for PAL is of course 720x576.
 
Hello,

Obviously the problem is because you have trimmed it....things don't
work like that....and certainly do not work like that in movie maker. To do
what you want you need a program like MovieDV Ver 5 from AIST. That and
similar programs will re-sample your image and in your case interpolate the
image so that (mostly) you will not get the classic jagged edges that you
report.

--
Best Wishes.....John Kelly
www.the-kellys.org
www.the-kellys.co.uk
Check out free video hosting at www.the-kellys.org
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All material gained from other sources is duly acknowledged. No Value is
obtained by publishing in any format other peoples work
 
Ummm, you said "Obviously the problem is because you have trimmed it" - could
you elaborate please?
Maybe you misunderstood - I have retrieved the video from the camera as type
1, uncompressed raw video. It hasn't been altered, compressed or reprocessed
in any way before I start on it with MovieMaker. When I trimmed the video to
5 minutes, I mean that it has been shortened only; I have not changed the
video size at all.
Since I am saving in DV-AVI PAL (25Mbps) format, I expected that MovieMaker
should be able to do this easily. For example if I had a segment with 1500
frames and trimmed it to 500 frames, if it is being saved as uncompressed,
unoptimised DV-AVI PAL, then all that needs to happen is save each frame
as-is.
There should be no interpolation required between frames.

What I am trying to do is very simple and I expect MovieMaker should be able
to handle it. Infact, I'd previously done just this with MovieMaker 1.x and
that produced no such artefacts. Unfortunately 1.x did not have all the
additional features of 2.x, and it isn't possible to go back to 1.x after
installing 2.x anyway.
I don't see a need to pay additional money for MovieDV when MovieMaker is
sufficient for my needs.

Thanks
 
You said.....

Yes, I simply cropped the image to an interesting, relevant part of the
image. The full-size image for PAL is of course 720x576.

So the result is that movie maker will try to 720 x 576 image out of your
trimmed video...end result Pixelation.....the only way you get around that
is by the use of sophistication that will never be available in Movie Maker.


--
Best Wishes.....John Kelly
www.the-kellys.org
www.the-kellys.co.uk
Check out free video hosting at www.the-kellys.org
----
\|||/
(oo)
----------ooO-(_)-Ooo-------------
All material gained from other sources is duly acknowledged. No Value is
obtained by publishing in any format other peoples work
 
A few notes:

1. DV is also compressed format. it uses lossy JPEG type compression.
However the compression ratio is relatively low to retain quality.

2. MM 1.0 can be used in parallel with MM 2.0 or 2.1. Just bring back the
moviemk.exe from SP1 cd or a C:\Windows\ServicepackFiles folder. Copy it as
Moviemk1.exe. Thats the only file needed. Others are already there with MM
2.0/2.1 install.

3. Make sure your QDV.DLL is properly registered. Execute the following line
on Start->Run dialog:
regsvr32 %windir%\system32\qdv.dll

4. Also install Windows media Encoder. it fixes a few issues with windows
DLLs.
 
"So the result is that movie maker will try to 720 x 576 image out of your
trimmed video"...
I assume you meant "... will try to get a 720 x 576 image...".

I start with a 720 x 576 video resolution. My target is a 720 x 576
resolution. Why do you expect that there'd be pixelation? I can imagine I'd
get that sort of issue if I changed video resolution, or was converting to
ntsc resolution (ignoring for now the fact that ntsc uses a different frame
rate), but I am not doing such a conversion.

Thanks
 
I'm sorry,

We seem to be going around in a circle here....its my understanding from the
full reply I briefly mentioned that you reduced the video to a non standard
size. If that is what you did then Movie Maker WILL make a hash out of it...

here is the full question and your answer...

Yes, I simply cropped the image to an interesting, relevant part of the
image. The full-size image for PAL is of course 720x576.

Rehan said:
How come the size is 400x390? Have you cropped it?
Click to expand...

Based on that and the title of this conversation it was my assumption that
you reduced the number of pixels in a file and then sent that file back to
Movie Maker and that you were not pleased with the results. If thats what
you did you will get a poor picture. The larger the disparity between what
you sent back to movie maker and what you wanted movie maker the larger the
set of artefacts will become.

--
Best Wishes.....John Kelly
www.the-kellys.org
www.the-kellys.co.uk
Check out free video hosting at www.the-kellys.org
----
\|||/
(oo)
----------ooO-(_)-Ooo-------------
All material gained from other sources is duly acknowledged. No Value is
obtained by publishing in any format other peoples work
 
Ah, that's where the confusion arose. I captured a frame from my movie which
was exhibiting the nasty artefacts. The captured frame was 720x576, but
before saving it I cropped it to 400x390 to concentrate on the more problem
areas of the frame. I then posted this to
http://www.image-dump.com/view.php?m=1&x=23466

This is intended only as a 'screenshot' so people can actually see the nasty
artefacts; I am not wanting to insert that reduced-size image back into the
video! :)

Thanks
 
Thanks for your notes... the problem remains (see below)
:
A few notes:

1. DV is also compressed format. it uses lossy JPEG type compression.
However the compression ratio is relatively low to retain quality.
Click to expand...

Ah, yes doing the numbers there must be some low-level compression, although
many descriptions of type-1/type-2 do not say this.
2. MM 1.0 can be used in parallel with MM 2.0 or 2.1. Just bring back the
moviemk.exe from SP1 cd or a C:\Windows\ServicepackFiles folder. Copy it as
Moviemk1.exe. Thats the only file needed. Others are already there with MM
2.0/2.1 install.
Click to expand...

Ok, I ran it, created a 3-4 second clip, saved it again as DV-AVI PAL
(25mbps) and the resulting video suffers from the same poor quality and
artefacts as MovieMaker 2.0. No suprise I suppose since it must be using the
same DLLs (I can't imagine any of the low-level file saving code is in the
moviemk.exe file).
I guess the only other thing would be to try finding all the old dlls for
MM1.0, although this is purely academic since I eventually want to use all
the effects, titling, etc found in MM2.0.
3. Make sure your QDV.DLL is properly registered. Execute the following line
on Start->Run dialog:
regsvr32 %windir%\system32\qdv.dll
Click to expand...

Yes, that's registered.
4. Also install Windows media Encoder. it fixes a few issues with windows
DLLs.
Click to expand...

I downloaded and installed. The problem still occurs.

Do you know if any Microsoft staff monitor this forum? And if it'd be
worthwhile raising a bug report?

Thanks,
Phil
 
Great, glad we got that sorted out ;-)

Now... do you have any ideas why I'm getting the image problem as seen in
that screenshot?

Cheers,
Phil
PS. do you know of any IRC channel(s) where movie editors hang out? (Where I
won't be told to go away for using MovieMaker :) )?
 
Hello,

How long is a piece of string???

It looks to me as though the marker for one frame is in the wrong place
causing each line of that frame to be lets say left shifted. "IF" thats the
case doing a bit of pre-processing might be in order.

What might work would be simply to load it into Windows Media Encoder
and whilst maintaining all settings (Size/Width etc) create a new file and
use that new file in your project...make sure you select "Deinterlace" under
the processing tab.

If that does not work save it as a HD (High Definition) file again using
Media Encoder. You will end up with a WMV file but of very good quality.

If that does not work, I do a good line in 10lb lump hammers !!

--
Best Wishes.....John Kelly
www.the-kellys.org
www.the-kellys.co.uk
Check out free video hosting at www.the-kellys.org
----
\|||/
(oo)
----------ooO-(_)-Ooo-------------
All material gained from other sources is duly acknowledged. No Value is
obtained by publishing in any format other peoples work
 
I had a quick look at your suggestion but could not find the 'deinterlace'
option... and I wasn't keen to save in WMV format since I may want to save
the video back to tape eventually.

Anyway, I stumbled across something. Although I was already viewing the
video at 100% size, I specifically set MPlayer to "Show Menu Bar", "Show
Title" and "Fit Player To Video On Start". Now I don't know which of them
fixed the problem, but the playback problems are gone!
So it appears some setting in the codec has been reset. I say this because
the playback was also bad in other media players (and now isn't), so it must
have been the codec used in the playback that was at fault. I had some
similar quality problems months back when I converted a file to VCD, so
assume it was the same codec at fault.
So therefore what suprises me is that setting media-player playback options
appear to influence codec settings (i.e the codec used not only by mplayer,
but also other media players, and MPG conversion when making VCDs)!

Now I just noticed that a vew video clips I have are displaying in what
appears to be a heavily solarized, reverse-colour video! But I can open them
in another player (eq winamp) and they play fine.

Blimey this stuff is flakey!
 
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