Why all this complexity!??

[Flav_cool]

Hi,

I started out today thinking I was gonna make dvd's from my Digital8 tapes...turns out I've been overwhelmed. It seems to me like there's a whole wealth of information one has to know about codecs, colorspaces, and hundreds of settings and scripting AHHHHH

Why does it have to be so complicated? Why can't you simply do a conversion from DV to MPEG2 without worrying if you got the wrong colorspace or other problems?

P.s. is the colorspace worry only for when using CCE? I was planning to use Procoder2 cause i heard it's good for interlaced sources...

Thanks,

Flaviu

[henryho_hk]

coz it's fun ~~

and it's free ~~

and paying money doesn't imply that you can have it done correctly ~~

[jggimi]

For approximately USD$100 you can aquire a "consumer-grade" commercial software product that will combine DV capture, non-linear editing, MPEG-2 encoding, DVD authoring, and disc burning.

If you have an internet connection capable of downloading 120MBs, you can try a 30-day trial of one popular example: Ulead's VideoStudio, at www.ulead.com

[Flav_cool]

Does the Ulead studio give results as good as manually going through all the steps?

[henryho_hk]

Flav, does your camera have a firewire/i-link connection? is it PAL or NTSC?

[Flav_cool]

It's NTSC and yes I connected through Firewire. Actually I already did a test run w/ procoder and it worked quite nicely (although looks better on TV than on computer) [There are some weird vertical-like jaggies on edges in the distance, I suspect it's from the interlacing effect, but on HDTV you can't see them...so it's ok)

[communist]

Try out this software:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=101690

Select VOB (DVD) as output - be warned though that it writes invalid Aspect Ratio. Set up DVD compliant resolution / fps and hit encode. Once you have the vob files just demux em with DGIndex, run DVDPatcher over it to fix the aspect ratio and author the DVD with muxman - pretty easy and good quality if you ask me - and it'll cost you nothing :)

[defaulk9]

On a high level, my response to "why all this complexity?" is simply that video is complex. Just because some programs hide the complexity from you doesn't mean it isn't there. The big difference is that the more you know, the more you will have control over the final result.

If you go with a commercial solution such as Ulead, I think you will get decent results when converting DV to mpeg2. Especially because this is a relatively simple task. You aren't guaranteed the *best* results of course because Ulead will choose parameters automatically regardless of whether they are best. But it would take a real trained eye to notice the difference in a case like this.

[trevlac]

I find this question to be really interesting on this forum (DV).

Going from DV to a DVD is not nearly as complex as getting an image(and sound) on a DV tape.

However, people seem to take the latter for granted. Most likely because they set their camera in auto mode and record. This would be like using a package to make DVDs from DV (which tend to cost much less than a camera). Both work ok most of the time, but sometimes it just doesn't cut it, and rarely is as good as a well thought out ... intentionally composed process.

Having said that ... I shoot a bunch in auto and crank out DVDs without too much thought ... but a technically imperfect product is (for me) often better than none at all. :D :D :D

[Flav_cool]

Thanks for all the input guys...

I did manage to do everything w/ Premiere + procoder2 + dvdlab and the quality (on TV) turned out to be very close to dv connected directly to tv.

How else other than auto could i shoot video? (you mean manual focus and lighting or what?)

[henryho_hk]

Talking about one-off solutions. Have anyone tried "WinAVI"? It is supposed to be able to take one AVI and then generate a VIDEO_TS directory.

[trevlac]

How else other than auto could i shoot video? (you mean manual focus and lighting or what?)

I'm not sure if I was supposed to respond ... frankly I'm an amature but a few years beyond newbie now. :D But here are some shooting issues ...

Technical in nature:

White balance: Auto has the camera guess at (probably the brightest) object and assume this is white. My experience with my cameras is that the results are not so good especially when things are dim. Proper balance will make an image look better (not too red or blue). You can 'fix' this on a computer but then you are working with far less information and may introduce new problems. Pro's worry about multiple lite sources with different color. To correct this they remove or filter the light sources.

Focus: Auto will keep changing. Do you want refocus if objects move? if the Camera moves? Depth of field comes into this. How much should be in focus? If the background is blurry you cause viewers to look at the person in the forground. You can do much on a PC after the fact.

Exposure: I think of this as a contrast issue. The range between black and white is limited to about 219 values for DV. If the real life range is large (very bright and dark) you have a problem. The example is often a person in front of a window. The person will be a shadow. A back light button will increase the exposure so the person stands out more but the window will become all max. An ND filter will lower the exposure possibly allowing you to see more outside of the window, but the person will become a black blob. Easy enough, don't point the camera at the window. :D But this happens in many other ways. Adjust to capture what you want. You can't get it back with a PC after the fact. You can use graduated ND filters outside and polerizers and no doubt other tricks like moving to the shade.

Frame Rate: This is really exposure time for video. If you muck with it, you will get different looks ... but you should leave it alone normally. Yeah for auto. ;)

Sound: Wow ... what can you say ... get the mic close, pointed toward what you want to record and away from what you don't want. Hard to do if your mic and camera are one and the same. If you can't understand what is being said ... it makes for a poor show.


Composition in Nature: - <This is the stuff that makes it less booring>

Camera Angle: Low high pointed at a corner vs a wall, maybe over a sholder. Video is a flat image. Make it 3d with an angle that adds perspective.

Camera Motion: Pan, slow zoom, tracking an object. Just make it smooth and slow.

Object Motion: If noone moves and the camera does not move ... don't make me watch it for more than 2 seconds. ;) But there must be interesting motion out there?

-----------------------------

Just a few things I wish i could get right ... :D :D

[theReal]

How else other than auto could i shoot video? (you mean manual focus and lighting or what?)

With consumer cameras it's almost impossible to use manual focus, also auto-expoure is almost the only way to go (if you have a quick switch between auto and manual then you can use auto to adjust and then switch to manual so that the exposure won't change i.e. while panning).

I'd never use auto-white balance, it makes everything look neutral - I rather use manual white balance (i.e. if there's shade and sunlight I'll make the white balance in the shade, so the sunlight will look warm nice and the shade looks neutral. If you white balance in the sunlight then the sunlight is neutral white and the shade is blueish - the look will be cold and unfriendly).

Lighting - you name it. One of the most important accessoir of a camcorder is a halogen headlight. The difference is: without the light people at your birthday dinner look like a homevideo birthday - pale, grainy with shadowy eyes. With the light they'll look like in a tv show about a birthday dinner :)
It really improves visual quality a lot in low-light situations (and every room is low-light at night unless you get some serious lamps in there!)