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View Full Version : DV Capture with Windows Media Encoder


SimonSez07
12th March 2003, 09:56
appearantly Windows Media Encoder 9 is able to capture video digitally from a dv camcorder (firewire) and encode in real-time to constant-quality wmv file. this is a great feature since it cuts out a lot of inbetween steps, requires little hdd space, and is FAST.

the only problem is, there is few pre-processing options. for instance when capturing interlaced dv to 320x240 wm9, it combines the two fields into each progressive frame, which creates a kind of ghosting effect. it looks like two images in each frame. (see the attached examples)

http://www.biscottis.biz/misc/image.jpg

the old-fashioned way, with avisynth or virtualdub i could discard one field and produce prefectly progressive 29.97 frame 320x240 video for encoding.

any idea how to do this in windows media encoder.


on a side note, im curious, when capturing from a dv firewire source using normal vfw capture (like, say, into windows media encoder or virtualdub) does the camera decode the dv and sent the frames over firewire, or does the computer do the decoding??

thanks for your help

-simon

lemon
12th March 2003, 10:44
Don't know how to do what you ask for in windows media encoder, I'm sorry.
Bur for the side note, the camera is really like a backup device. It only sends and receives DV coded data. It sends the stream of data and then the computer does the decoding for viewing and/or re-encoding it.
The quality of the video data will be the same, but you will see it different (in the computer monitor) depending on which DV codec you have installed.
You can find info about that in the DV forum.

fingernailX
14th March 2003, 14:18
You might try Movie Maker 2. I don't know if it will convert DV to wmv9 on the fly but it does an imported file so much quicker than WME. It also allows you to capture at least an analog source to 720 by 480 WMV at 2.1 kbps at least on my machine (2.8 ghz). It also burns in the Highmat format which Panasonic says they will playback in their settops starting 3rd Qtr 2003. On my machine that I am very happy with the encoding speed of every other program, even Tmpgenc, WME's speed sux taking about 5X for a 2 pass with deinterlace. I don't have that many good years left to wait 5X for anything ;-)