DoMiNo and render question

stewade wrote on 6/1/2006, 9:04 PM
After a little advice/experience here.

Just purchased a Creative Audigy2 ZS Video Editor and have a noticeably superior image on my broadcast monitor than before, obviously from the DoMiNo fx on the VE.

I experimented a little and ran it back via the old way (1394 to DV cam to RCA out to TV) and I am amazed by the difference.

This better quality won't render this way obviously so my question is:-

Do you think I will suffer any loss of quality if I render, send to DV tape and bring it back in again via firewire through the VE. Will it remain the high quality I see in front of me now?

I don't have the original tape footage to recapture otherwise I'd do it this way.

Any thoughts?

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 6/2/2006, 3:25 AM
Generally a DV capture is a straight bit-for-bit data transfer. Ideally there should be no difference whatsoever. If the VE card alters the signal while capturing i'd throw it away and buy something different.

edit ...

Now that i've read the web page for the VE, i'd say don't recapture through it if you can avoid it. It does not do DV captures. It does a lot of processing and most likely captures as MPEG. This is guaranteed to lose a lot of quality. Unfortunately Creative has some errors on their website and i can't get to the tech specs page to find out more details.
stewade wrote on 6/2/2006, 1:14 PM
Creative supply an app on their site (VidCap) and I'm able to capture as DV. Either way I always capture the raws via direct DV (bypassing the VE) so no prob there.

I'm more curious about using this tool as hardware post production filter. The quality of the footage showing on screen is definitely better. If anything it looks very "filmic" (like it's been deinterlaced and run through 1 or 2 MB filters).

It has managed to achieve a look I like without using software filters to do so...

Perhaps my question is more about whether I can expect DV to degrade on/off tape? I'm thinking PC 2 PC as bit-for-bit transfer might be an option now that you've mentioned it.

Thx - it's food for thought...
Chienworks wrote on 6/2/2006, 1:18 PM
Except for the possibility of dropping frames, there should be no degradation going to tape and back. However, this assumes straight DV -> DV transfers at all steps.

Going through the VE is going to involve processing and reconverting to DV, which will be a lossy conversion. How lossy depends on the device.