Gonna try again

marceggers wrote on 5/7/2002, 12:15 PM
Two months ago I began trying to put my digital camcorder tapes on VCD. After several weeks I decided to backoff for a while because I was becoming so frustrated. While cooling my heels I have tried to monitor these forums and learn all that I can. It appears that what I want to do is possible or impossible depending upon whose forum comment you believe. So I'm ready to try again. If what I want to do isn't feasible then I will purchase whatever soft/hardware is needed to get the job done and lick my wounds later. As stated I want to put my digital videos on some permanent medium...either VCD, CD, or DVD (I'll need to buy a DVD burner, however.) My camcorder is a Canon ZR20. My system is a Pentium 4, 2.0gig processor, 512 RDRAM, 40 gig harddrive. I use Sonic Foundry Video Factory 2 as my software. My connection is IEEE1394 Firewire. I am able to play my video directly from my camcorder onto my 27" TV and the quality is great. That's the kind of quality I want when I move the video onto whatever medium will work best for me. When I download the video from my camcorder onto my computer and play it back on the default screen included in VF2 (approx. 4"x6") it still looks okay. But if I enlarge that screen to cover my 15" flatscreen monitor the video becomes very pixelated. If I take that same video and put it onto a VCD and try to play it on my 27" TV it is totally unrecognizable. I am obviously missing something very basic and important. If anyone can help I would be forever indebted. Thanks.

Comments

Former user wrote on 5/7/2002, 12:23 PM
The best quality you are going to get is the original tape. Nothing will improve upon that.

The Next best quality will be DVD. VCD and a CD will be the lowest because they are at the lowest bitrate.

You say you want a permanent medium, but honestly no one knows yet how long CD-R's or RWs will retain the data. A tape will last several years, if not decades.

You cannot judge the quality of the video vs. the TV by what you see on the computer screen. Most computers cannot handle the conversion from a DV avi to a playable pic at full rez so they play a low rez quality video.

Again, your best quality will be the digital tapes. The rest depends upon the type of encoding and software you use to make those files.

Dave T2
Chienworks wrote on 5/7/2002, 12:24 PM
VCD is never going to do what you want; it's just too limited in resolution and bandwidth. You'll have to produce DVDs encoded in MPEG-2 at substantially higher bitrates in the 8Mbps range or higher.
johnmeyer wrote on 5/7/2002, 12:43 PM
If you do a search under my user name for the subject "VCD Quality not acceptable" you'll find a long version of this short answer.

The short version is that the state-of-the-art of today's encoding technology available to those of us with less than $100,000 to spend does not permit creating a disc -- even a DVD -- that matches the quality of DV tape.

So what should YOU do? Put everything on DV tape -- making a backup tape to be put in another location -- so the video will survive no matter what. Then, wait 3-5 years until the consumer encoding technology catches up to where the professional encoding technology is today, and then burn onto DVD media.

My personal opinion is that CD/DVD media will last far longer than tape, but as another poster pointed out, no one really knows yet for sure. We DO know that tape breaks down after 10-20 years. We also know that many (although not all) laserdiscs rotted after only 3-5 years (I have a bunch of them that unfortunately can prove this point). However, I also have CD-ROMs from the late 80's, and they play just fine, and some CD-Rs from 1991 which also play just fine. I've never had one go bad (although I have had batches of bad media). Most accelerated aging tests predict that CD-R and DVD media will last 50-100 years. Thus, your goal, I believe, is correct, and you should definitely eventually put your video on disc. Just wait a few years so you don't waste your time creating inferior video.

John
Former user wrote on 5/7/2002, 12:52 PM
I agree with Johnmeyer on everything except the "wait 3-5 years". With the demand growing and the technology adapting, I think a good quality stable format will be sooner. There will be a move toward affordable hardware encoders and a DVD standard that will give minimal loss quality.

Look how fast video editing on home computers has come in the last 2 years. The media will grow quicker in my opinion.

Dave T2
johnmeyer wrote on 5/7/2002, 1:11 PM
Dave,

You may be right about your timing. I too have been amazed at how quickly video editing quality has increased, and prices have decreased. The only thing that made me stretch my consumer price/Hollywood quality DVD encoding estimate out so long is that I was heavily involved in "desktop videoconferencing" in 1992, a full decade ago. I got a very close look at learning curves for encoding technology and what hardware and software was required to do a given level of encoding. To get to the point where you cannot visually tell the difference between the original DV tape, and a DVD encoded from the same material, you will have to have a multi-pass encoder with a LOT of compute horsepower behind it. If one of the chip vendors can produce a chip set with all of this compute power on it, and if the demand can cause the volume to increase to the point where that chipset can sell for under $100 (OEM), then we've got a shot at having what we want.

I sure hope you are correct, because I'm dying to have this stuff right now.

John