Not creating DV files as expected

scs0 wrote on 6/18/2003, 9:29 PM

I'm having trouble creating a quality DV file from existing assets. The files that are being produced show a noticable rippling effect on moving content, especially on diagonal lines, and the quality just look murky. There's also a black border around all sides of the image even though I have the "Stretch video to fill output frame" option checked. It makes me wonder if I've set some sort of option to squeeze the video entirely within the safe-zone of a TV screen.

My assets are NTSC-DV files set to a 4:3 aspect ratio that were created with the ArcSoft Showbiz application. My understanding of the DV format is that it's a standard and great for video editing because you do not lose quality as you edit, save, edit, save, etc the way you would if you used a video format like MPEG-2. This has been my experience with DV files; I've edited, saved, then re-edited content over and over and didn't notice any loss of quality.

On my Make Movie dialog, I have the "Stretch video to fill output frame" checked, so the app shouldn't need to be doing any processing of the source assets at all.

Any idea why my final DV files look so bad?

Thanks
Steve

Here's some sys info:

Here's some more stats:
App: VideoFactory 2.0c (Build 125)
DirectX Version: 9.0
App Used for DV File Playback: CinePlayer 1.5

Operating System
Platform: Windows XP
Version: 5.01.2600
Language: English
System Locale: English
User Locale: English

Processor
Class: Pentium III
Identifier: AuthenticAMD
Number of processors: 1
MMX available: Yes
SSE available: Yes
SSE2 available: No

Display
Primary: 1024x768x32

Memory
Physical memory: 1,048.0 MB
Paging memory available: 2,521.8 MB
Virtual memory possible: 2,097.0 MB

Comments

DaveCT wrote on 6/18/2003, 11:22 PM

Steve,
I had a problem with the "rippling" effect you descibe. I had unchecked the option "Always use Sonic Foundry DV reader". Re-checking this option solved the problem in my case. Also uncheck "Stretch video to fill output frame" when you render the file. You don't want that.

-Dave

scs0 wrote on 6/19/2003, 5:23 PM

Thanks for the tip, but it didn't seem to help. My output file just looks absolutely terrible and its still putting black borders around the video. I don't get it, my source is a 4x3 DV file and my output is a 4x3 DV file. What is VideoFactory doing to make my video look so bad?

laz wrote on 6/23/2003, 2:26 AM

DV quality shouldn't deteriorate, but does if 1 of a number of things interferes;

operating system is faulty;

hd is faulty;

DMA isn't enabled on hd's;

only 1 hd is in pc;

RAM or pcu can't cope;

There's probably a few other reasons aswell, like background progs being on. When I'm in VF I use EndItAll to turn off all but non-vitals, as av can interfer drastically.