Comments

Chienworks wrote on 6/20/2003, 10:25 AM
Hmmmm. The vast majority of the work a coded does is performed when encoding, not when decoding. Encoding is the step that entails most of the quality loss. Decoding is much more straight forward and pretty difficult to muck up. I'd be surprised to see any demonstrable difference at all between decoding with different DV codecs.
Erk wrote on 6/20/2003, 10:50 AM
I recommend using Windows Media Player 6.4 for a quick-loading DV/avi viewer. In Windows 98 and XP, it's found in programs/windows media player/mplayer2.exe

It doesn't have all the stupid skins and "visualizations" and crap that make the later players take a day to open.

I set its options so that is the default player for all .avis. I don't think it plays MPEG2, so for that my default is Media player 8 or 9.
mikkie wrote on 6/20/2003, 12:15 PM
For info on wmplayer, the faq page here is great: http://www.nwlink.com/~zachd/

To get away from the wmplayer 9 skins, choose the classic skin, and go to the minimal view - no real difference from the vastly limited 6.4 in performance IMO. WMplayer 9 will do mpg2 once you install the codec files, freeware or otherwise - VV4c should install the mainconcept codec so windows uses this by default, depending on what else you've got installed on your system. As Erk wrote, earlier versions like 6.4 won't do this or wmv 9 etc.

RE: a file viewer, echoing Kelly's post, don't think there'd be much difference from using the MS files for decode/display. I know another DV codec can take over from the MS stuff though, and that can be inferior depending on software installed. At any rate, as far as I can tell the SOFO DV codec is built-in, not something easily taken out as a package and put where windows can access it, which would offend the legal folks anyway.
WolfgangJ wrote on 6/20/2003, 2:43 PM
Chienworks,

but why do I notice QUITE a DIFFERENCE in sharpness when I compare Vegas preview
with any other (Ati, windows mediaplayer etc) fileviewer ? Before I used vegas
Vegas-preview, I thought my camcorder quality was poor.
Chienworks wrote on 6/20/2003, 3:17 PM
WolfgangJ, Media Player defaults to showing DV clips at half resolution. You can change it to show full resolution and this may help quite a bit. How you do this depends on which version of Media Player you have. These steps are for version 9, but you should be able to find something similar with 7 or 8. Click on Tools / Options / Performance / Advanced. Move the Digital Video slider all the way to the right for the Large setting. Click OK ... etc. This should improve the quality of the playback quite a bit.
BJ_M wrote on 6/20/2003, 3:25 PM
Vegas does not install the main concept codec .. it doesnt use the main concept codec either ...

if you install the stand alone main concept codec -- media player will use it

media player 9 is the worse piece of crap in windows (well near the top of the list) ..

as mentioned -- media player 6.4 is vastly better - but even better is media player clasic (6.4 modified) ...

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=82303