newbie - my video looks better. Why?

revchawls wrote on 10/16/2003, 4:09 AM
I'm trying to learn a lot in a short time (with little luck). I'm a bit bewildered why when I burned the rendered DVD (didn't seem to make any difference between AVI or MPEG-2) on to my DVD-RW and viewed it on the computer (my regular DVD player wouldn't load it), it looked worse than when I just recorded it straight from the mini-dv player to video (analog). The DVD looked very "pixelly". It can't be the camera/tape. So I'm assuming it was either the way I captured it, rendered it, or burned it.

Any suggestions? Thanks.

Comments

Tampa wrote on 10/16/2003, 6:04 AM
There isn't quite enough information in your post. Can we assume that since you are in a Vegas Video forum that you used Vegas to capture and render? A lot of STB players do not read DVD-RW. They read DVD-R fine, but not DVD-RW. The STB player I have is one of those cases. Your original video will always look just a tick better. With the "BEST" settings Mpeg2 as well as AVI will degrade just a tick. However, not enough degradation to produce pixelation. That sounds like a setting wasn't correct. If you're dealing with less than an hour of video turn all the settings to "BEST". Finally, if you can capture straight from the camera and not a player.
farss wrote on 10/16/2003, 9:01 AM
If your watching the DVD on a computer the first problem is that it cannot display interlaced video properly, it has to run it as progressive so you will get a lot of interlace artifacts on the vertical edges of fast moving objects.

It will look fine through a STB and TV.

You could get around this by using 24p but I haven't tried this and I suspect unless the source was shot with progressive scan at 24 fps the frame rate conversion and field merg eis going to give you a big quality loss.

But some more detailed explanaition of just what's wrong with the way it looks would help us help you.
Jay Gladwell wrote on 10/16/2003, 9:06 AM
Chuck, that's an interesting comment. When I look at the videos and DVDs made from them, I see no difference at all. Maybe I'm going blind!
farss wrote on 10/16/2003, 9:34 AM
The other odd thing I've seen is playing back the DV footage staight from a DV VCR it looks worse on a good monitor than going into a TV.

It seems the lower bandwidth of the TV smooths out some of the DV artifacts.
gold wrote on 10/16/2003, 9:51 AM
Are you going component, svideo, or composite to the tv. If the latter then you would expect a resolution more like 320x240 with a lot of smoothing than 708x480? I view everything on a large screen tv and believe me the quality of digital video is much less than analog from a C-band satellite; this is normal. Dish Network has different levels of compression for different channels it appears: I can see artifacts clearly on USA and Sci-fi but not on HBO. Your monitor gives you true 708x480.
revchawls wrote on 10/17/2003, 12:33 PM
Just wanted to thank all of you for the help (and attempts to help). What a great group of folks! Thanks again.

It's very difficult to translate the dynamics of what you all know and we all are trying to do into the language and experience of a beginner. I suppose that's why the "Dummies" series of books has made someone a multimillionaire, eh?

Just to update... part of the problem was in the original capture from my camera not having my settings set for best quality (to eventually be saved as MPEG for tv viewing). Also I was capturing a DV tape from a 3chip Panasonic camera but that was originally recorded on a smaller camcorder, which apparently can result in more pixelly look. Also was unaware that computer screens see things in more detail than television screens and that you save things in different formats depending on if they are intended for tv, computer and/or internet. My materials are intended for training both to be projected on big screen and for home tv use. Later we'll also use for internet but that's a whole other thing to deal with.

Anyway, not resolved yet but thanks to all. Would e-mail you personally but don't know your addresses. Thanks.

Chuck
RafalK wrote on 10/17/2003, 1:56 PM
This used to happen to me back when I first started and captured video from my camera via the USB cable. Display on the computer is smaller than TV screen so everything looked great but when I burned my first DVD, I was very unhappy. I have not had that issue after I started using the Firewire to capture from the camera.